WANEP places special focus on collaborative approaches to conflict prevention, and peacebuilding, working with diverse actors from civil society, governments, intergovernmental bodies, women groups and other partners in a bid to establish a platform for dialogue, experience sharing and learning, thereby complementing efforts at ensuring sustainable peace and development in West Africa and beyond.
WANEP emphasizes ownership and bottom-up approach to peacebuilding practice which enables the National Networks to carry out interventions that reflect the peculiarities of human security issues in their various countries.
The national networks represent the WANEP brand and work in member states while the Regional Secretariat engages at the strategic level with ECOWAS, AU, UN and other intergovernmental, governmental and non-governmental organizations.
The mass action for peace is credited with urging Charles Taylor’s government and the Liberians for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) into a ceasefire and leading to the end of the conflict.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has cited WIPNET as being one of the key factors supporting women’s prominent role in peace building in Liberia.
In this regard, allow me to note the remarkable work done by the Ivorian section of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, WANEP-CI, which has set up an independent early warning system, in particular through the dissemination of monthly reports.
of the collection of information, relating to human security, and which naturally aims to support actions to prevent conflicts and promote peace in Côte d'Ivoire.
[6] In 2002, WANEP entered into a historic partnership with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in the implementation of a regional early warning and response system referred to as ECOWARN.
Inspired by its desire to contribute and commit to the sustenance of peace during elections, WANEP in collaboration with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is implementing a five-year project (2015 to 2019) tagged, “Mitigating Election Violence in West Africa through National Early Warning Systems (NEWS)” in target countries of West Africa namely, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, Ghana and Sierra Leone.
WANEP is working in partnership with the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in Accra, Ghana to run the West Africa Peacebuilding Institute (WAPI).