Work
began in 1990 to establish a regional network of peacebuilding initiatives
in West Africa. This arose as a result of the Liberia civil war, which
necessitated the creation of a regional peace intervention force. Religious
and civil society groups were mobilized to collectively participate
in active peacebuilding.
In
the northern region of Ghana a consortium of non-governmental organizations with
funding support from the British High Commission in Ghana became actively involved
in peacebuilding to respond to inter-communal violence that threatened Ghana's
stability.
A
similar experience of cooperative action was witnessed in Sierra Leone in May
1997 when a civil society movement comprising all sectors of that society mobilized
against military rule and successfully saw the ousting of the Armed Forces Revolutionary
Council (AFRC). The West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) was born out
of these experiences.
After
a feasibility study conducted throughout the sub-region, representatives of seven
West African countries in 1998 officially launched WANEP in Accra Ghana. Many
of the delegates at the launch of WANEP were key actors in the civil society collective
actions outlined above.
They
created WANEP as a mechanism to harness peacebuilding initiatives and to strengthen
collective interventions that were already bearing good fruits in Liberia, the
Northern Region of Ghana, and Sierra Leone.
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