Ghana Country Coordinator for US Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability

The landmark 2019 Global Fragility Act (GFA) presents a new and necessary opportunity for the U.S. Government (USG) to prioritize conflict prevention and transform how it partners with countries affected by fragility and conflict to foster a more peaceful and stable world. Learning from the United States’ decades-long stabilization experiences in conflict-affected settings such as Afghanistan and Iraq, and consistent with the Act, the 2020 U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability (SPCPS) conceives an integrated, evidence-based, prevention-focused, coherent, and field-driven approach to address drivers of fragility that can threaten U.S. national security and ultimately cost millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. The new U.S. SPCPS reflects emerging threats and opportunities and outlines guiding principles to inform our whole-of-government work, in partnership with other countries, institutions, and organizations, as we implement the SPCPS and its four goals. These principles fall into three categories: (1) we will challenge the USG status quo, (2) we will pursue meaningful partnership at all levels, and (3) we will exploit synergies with other Administration priorities. In executing these principles, we aim to fulfil the intent of the Act in a way that meets the catalytic vision of the expert civil society coalition and Members of Congress who championed the GFA and counters the emergent, challenging, and historic trends the United States and international partners confront today. The GFA requires a holistic approach to help partners address the political, social, and economic drivers of fragility, expand effective and accountable governance, and bolster local conflict resolution mechanisms. The U.S. SPCPS recognizes the transnational nature of threats to stability facing certain regions, and the need for regional solutions to address them. SPCPS implementation in Coastal West Africa (CWA) provides the opportunity to build regional capacity to respond more effectively to shocks and emerging challenges and leverage the transnational social, economic, and political nexuses that contribute to resilience and peace. The SPCPS elevates connections to current and emerging challenges, including those regarding democracy, governance, respect for human rights, multilateralism, gender equality, youth participation, security and justice sector reform, atrocity prevention, global health security, conflict mitigation, peacebuilding, and climate change. Key to the success of SPCPS implementation is extensive and ongoing partnership with host country governments, regional institutions, civil society, academics, private sector, and like-minded and non-traditional donors to jointly design the CWA regional plan and programs, ensuring the local ownership that GFA and the SPCPS envision. There is a unique window of opportunity in CWA to engage regional bodies, governments, local communities, international partners, and sub-national partners to build on existing strengths and prevent internal and external threats from metastasizing into broader conflict or a humanitarian crisis. There is also an opportunity for synergy with stabilization and conflict prevention efforts in the Sahel and the NSC’s forthcoming Sahel Strategy. Challenges in the Sahel and CWA are interlinked, but each region also faces distinct local political dynamics that shape risks, resiliencies, and responses to conflict and violence. Unlike the individual countries selected under the GFA, the regional effort proposed for CWA includes five countries, five USG Country Teams, and significant involvement from USG entities specializing in the West African region. Each phase of the GFA for CWA should be approached primarily through a regional lens framing collective risks, sources of resilience, goals, and programmatic needs before applying country-specific perspectives.