The advent of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 1975 can be described as an event of great magnitude in the sub-regional security evolution of the region because many scholars have at various times described West Africa as an ‘unfinished state, ‘a truculent world of tragedy’, a mere geographical expression’ and inevitability of instability. This article examines the role of ECOWAS in peacebuilding through the establishment and deployment of ECOWAS Standby Force (ESF) into the West African region. The paper succinctly appreciates the effort of African Union in its peace-building operations. It also explicates in clear terms and presents relevant cases of ESF role in the prevention and fighting of insurgencies in the region. However, it particularly focuses on the following questions; Can the current security architecture of ESF cope with the level of sophistication of insurgent groups across the region? Under what circumstances will ESF be able to adequately confront the insurgencies? Does ECOWAS have the capacity to spearhead such military operations? How has ESF, an instrument meant to ensure cooperative security been efficient and effective in this region? And determine how existing ESF can be strengthened to achieve effective state-building against insurgencies in Africa. Keywords: Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Insurgency, ECOWAS Standby Force (ESF), West African Region

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The 2008 global crisis has placed food insecurity high on the international political and economic agenda. Since then, a veritable securitisation of global food production and consumption has been under way, reinforcing discursive linkages between hunger, sustainable development and the environment. Pressures to feed a growing global population and satisfy ever growing energy needs while protecting the environment, call for urgent action. More and more, the market-based “solution” to these complex problems is presented to us in the form of increased agricultural production through the use of genetic modification techniques driven by a handful of profit-seeking corporations. Analyzing the role that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) play in the current global agricultural restructuring, “from a green to a gene revolution”, and against the acute crisis of capitalism background, it is argued that the market-led technological approach to food insecurity fails to address its most fundamental causes: global inequity in access to resources and food distribution. Rather than challenging old assumptions and actors, GMOs help renew and re-legitimise them by inserting them into a new problematic. Most importantly, GMOs add a set of new challenges and risks to current crises that require not only expensive systems of monitoring and regulation, but also a fundamental rethink of the ways and institutions through which we pursue (human) security. Keywords: human security, food insecurity, genetically modified organisms (GMOs)

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While the provision by government of a house and lot to homeless and impoverished beneficiaries may constitute a substantial form of public service delivery, it nevertheless may substitute for, or leave unaddressed many other problems of daily life. Using Human Security and Urban Planning perspectives for two resettlement sites in the peri-urban fringe of Metro Manila, the Philippines, this research shows that new challenges associated with remote location have entered the lives of housing beneficiaries. The narrations of the respondents further show that day-to-day routines revolve often around typical concerns relating to unemployment, the rearing of children, food availability, and need to access medical facilities. It is argued hence that these and other concerns about the way low-cost housing is delivered should be addressed prospectively by policy makers and planners if one is to ensure that government intervention results in net added daily security rather than creating equivalent or worse states to the ones that had prevailed for slum dwellers in the inner city. The research contributes to re-conceptualization or enrichment of “security” by showing that the pursuit of freedom from fear and freedom from want may include a significant spatial or geographic dimension, especially in the crowded megacities of Asia. Key Terms: resettlement, insecurity, access, urban fringe, Metro Manila

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