Human Security Issues In Liberia Crisis:Intervention Of ECOWAS And UN

This master thesis’s aim is to have a look into the human security’s management process in case of conflict, especially in Africa. In fact, Africa is the area where most of the conflicts occur. The work will focus on the Liberia crisis because of its importance in term of duration of the conflict, issues that were to be handled, and the intervention of several third parts. The work will mostly be regarding the question of Human Security.Human security is an important issue regarding the contemporary era. In fact, that concept takes individual as referent. In this concern individuals are taken as themselves and no more included to a system or as members of the society. Individual as referent hasn’t always been obvious regarding that the referent has always been the state and some still think it should stay that way. Taking the individual as referent, changes also the look while it comes to threats he is exposed to. Taking into account that the referent is small in the size compared to the State which was the first referent to security, it happens that he is likely exposed to much more threats. Human Security is divided into seven levels which are the economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security and to end up political security. These levels gathered the immediate needs of Human beings. And these needs are damaged and not provided for several reasons, if one of them being crisis.Crises obviously are one of the most prominent threats to Human security because in that case the threat is intentional and voluntary. It thus becomes more violent. When a crisis occurs the leadership in place is weakened and is not able to meet the population needs and no organs work properly to provide security creating a chaos. This leads to the violation of the basic rights of human being, putting them into an issue of Human Security. In this case, others have the obligation to intervene when the authorities in charge to secure their population are unable or unwilling to do so and sometimes even responsible of the issue.The intervention of third parts which are external in a conflict raised flags and even more when the conflict is internal as in Liberia. In that specific case, two different organizations helped for the management of the conflict. Those two organizations are the Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) on the regional level and the United Nations (UN) on the international level. The flags raised are from different range but most of the time the question of Sovereignty violation prevails. This work will also deal with the case in which the question of Sovereignty becomes the one of the necessity and responsibility to protect.Some other questions are related to the reasons why third parties get involve in the crisis. And some even wonder if those reasons are rights.In this study, the reasons of intervention of each organization will be put under the loop. For each of them the intervention methods will be discussed, the process used by each of them will be looked over (was it diplomatic or armed)? It is also important to mention that the intervention in the crisis were done at a different point of time by both organizations following their believes and reasons.The ECOWAS was the first to intervene in the crisis, several months following the rise of the conflict in1989. Following the believe of protecting the spread of the crisis to other States in the surrounding and regarding the human security issue, they couldn’t stay without taking any actions. The intervention wasn’t good handled and didn’t show good results till the cooperation with the United Nations. Many reasons were the basis to the failure of the intervention of ECOWAS, going from the clashes between member states of ECOWAS about the intervention to the agreement of the different parties involved in the crisis. It is then important to deal with the agreement of the parties to get to the resolution of a crisis.The United Nations intervention came with the difficulties of ECOWAS to deal with the crisis. Other reasons were listed for that intervention such as the threat to global peace and also the Human security issue. That intervention lunched by the UN made the ECOWAS mission credible. At no time was the UN intervention free from the first mission on the ground. In fact, the United Nations mission catched up with an ongoing mission. Due to the fact that both missions were linked, it was obvious to have a good cooperation which was the only way to lead to peace.The cooperation between both organizations wasn’t easy in the beginning due to their differences, to the mutual trust and to the perspective of each of them. Here also, it is good to portray the necessity of cooperation between different actors with different capabilities and perspectives.Regarding all this factors, the choice of Liberia crisis as a key study on the realm of Human security issue is also of a great value view that two organizations had to cooperate for the first time. It also paved the way to better cooperation in the future. The issue of Human security is to be handled carefully because of the proportion the question takes in the actual world. People’s rights versus States, that is the question to deal with. The question is to be discussed for long and is to become even more important view the significance given to the matter and the profusion of literature regarding the question. The responsibility to protect is taking over the concept of Sovereignty and then the matter of Human security over the one of the usually State security.It can be obvious to argue that waging war for Human security is right but it is also good to remember that peace is even more important. The argument could be that it is wiser to prepare peace without waiting for war. Finding the way to it might not be easy but trying is not excluded too. A better cooperation of different organizations in that sense is required.