Conflicts in North and West Africa are increasingly transnational, making borders, borderlands, and border communities ever more important for the stability of the state.
Building on a disaggregated analysis of more than 171 000 violent events collected by ACLED, our Lab examined the increasing importance of border regions in the development of armed conflicts in the region since the end of the 1990s.
The results are part of a new OECD Sahel and West Africa Club report launched at the Munich Security Conference on February 19th, 2022.
Entitled “Borders and Conflicts in North and West Africa”, this new publication addresses three crucial questions for the future of counter-insurgency operations in the region: Are borderlands more violent than other spaces? Has the intensity of violence increased in border regions over time? And are some borderlands more violent than others?
The report shows that border regions are indeed more violent than other regions in general. The report also shows that the relationship of violent events to borders varies significantly over time as discrete episodes of conflict have waxed and waned within the region. Finally, the report shows that, far from being solely determined by state failure or policy, border violence reflects larger political issues that can threaten a state’s very existence.
The report is edited by Marie Trémolières, Olivier J. Walther and Steven M. Radil (editors). Other contributors include David G. Russell, Matthew Pflaum, Alexander Thurston, Alain Antil, Kehinde A. Bolaji, Emanuela Claudia Del Re, Maman Sambo Sidikou, Thomas Cantens, José Luengo-Cabrera, and Mareike Schomerus.
Trémolières M, Walther O, Radil S. (2022), Borders and Conflicts in North and West Africa, West African Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/6da6d21e-en.
By Olivier Walther