ALPC PROLIFERATION AND ARMED CONFLICT IN THE MANO RIVER REGION

In recent decades while the cold war between the two superpowers was ending giving hope for a peaceful world West Africa was falling into a system of civil conflicts with the increasing use of SALW. Indeed it was during the 1990s that the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone broke out with their share of barbarity jeopardising political stability and human security. They led to the destruction of all economic development efforts through the plundering of natural resources thus testifying to the proliferation and circulation of SALW in the sub-region. The phenomenon of arms combined with conflicts is becoming a recurrent fact and remains unending because it conceals the interests of the rulers and rebels who need the prolongation of disorder.