Head of EU Delegation in Ghana visits WANEP-Regional

His Excellency Ambassador Maerten at the Peace Monitoring Centre

The Head of the European Union’s Delegation in Ghana, Ambassador Claude Maerten paid a working visit to WANEP’s Regional office on 7th of December, 2011. Primarily, his visit was to acquaint himself at first hand with the work of WANEP particularly in Ghana in the framework of the upcoming Elections in 2012.

During the meeting with staff, Ambassador Maerten explained the role of the Delegation and the EU in general and its interest’s one of which was the strengthening of Democratic institutions and norms. In linking Democracy to Peace as espoused under the WANEP programme Peacebuilding and Democratic Governance, the Executive Director of WANEP, Emmanuel Bombande, in welcoming Ambassador Maerten spoke about WANEP’s resolve to seek and promote peace across the sub-region through its support for democracy. Building on the WANEP success story in the 2008 elections, the Executive Director highlighted the current challenges to peace and security in Ghana with reference to the 2012 Elections and how WANEP seeks to intervene to ensure its peaceful and democratic outcome.

Ambassador Maerten was later given a tour of WANEP’s upgraded Peace Monitoring Centre (PMC) to witness how daily alerts are tracked and monitored across the sub-region. The PMC is the situation monitoring and analysis division of WANEP’s West Africa Early Warning Network (WARN) through which WANEP Regional Secretariat and its fifteen (15) national networks support the ECOWAS early warning mechanism as stipulated in the Memorandum of Understanding the two institutions entered into since 2002. His Excellency Ambassador Maerten said he was impressed at the volume of work being done at the PMC and the detail of monitoring events even at the community level in order to get policy makers well informed on response mechanisms and options.