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UN Disarmament Teams in West Africa Meet to Work Out Strategies

UN News Service (New York)
NEWS
May 24, 2004
Posted to the web May 26, 2004

Four Disarmament, Demobilization and Re-Integration (DDR) teams from United
Nations peacekeeping missions, national governments and development partners
have discussed how to stop the circulation of fighters and weapons through
porous regional borders.
The teams from Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone agreed at
the meeting Friday in Dakar, Senegal, to increase cross-country collaboration
and harmonize national DDR programmes in West Africa, "a region where violence
easily spreads across state boundaries and with massive cross-border
circulation of combatants and illicit weapons," the host of the meeting, the UN
Office for West Africa (UNOWA), said in a statement.
They also discussed the need to neutralize "spoilers," those individuals or
groups who maintain the warring and hamper efforts at DDR.
After their next meeting, they would submit recommendations to the following
meeting of the heads of UN peace missions in West Africa, according to UNOWA.
The fifth regional meeting of mission chiefs, also previously scheduled for
Friday, was postponed. It was to have included a review of the simmering
conflict in Guinea's Guinea-Forestière Province.

   

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