On 18 February, Adama Barrow was officially inaugurated as the third President of the Republic of The Gambia, timely coinciding with Gambia’s Independence Day. After more than a month and a half of uncertainty about the future of the country following President Yahya Jammeh’s refusal to recognise his defeat after the 1 December 2016 elections, he finally agreed to step down under the threat of ECOWAS soldiers and went into exile in Equatorial Guinea. This allowed Barrow, the victorious winner who was himself exiled in Senegal, to return to the country. The outcome of the Gambian crisis has provoked different reactions. Read on

The murderous attack on the Joint Operational Mechanism base in Gao on 18 January threatens to undermine efforts to achieve peace in Mali. The attack, which killed nearly 80 people and injured more than 100, targeted a key feature of the Algiers peace agreement: joint patrols. These patrols, which bring together soldiers from the Malian military, members of the Co-ordination of Azawad Movements as well as from several militia groups, are aimed at securing areas that are currently beyond the control of authorities, particularly in the north. Read on

On 13 January 2017 in New York, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), briefed the UN Security Council on West Africa’s status. Even though Ibn Chambas welcomes the region’s progress on democracy, where most of the recent elections have taken place without irregularities, he expressed concern about the political crisis in The Gambia. Read on

With the financial support of the Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security (GRIP) just released an interactive timeline that allows the viewer to retrace and recall the region’s major peace and security events since 2011.You can easily create your own journey and discover information by country (Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Senegal) or at the regional level. Read on