Challenges to The Evolution of G5 Sahel into A Regional Security Integration

Abstract

Established as a regional collective security organization by Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Burkina Faso, the five countries of the Sahel, one of Africa's eco-climatic regions, the G5 Sahel is a sub-regional international organization that aims to harmonize security and development strategies and activities among its members. This promising initiative, which ultimately targeted regional security integration, is now at risk of becoming a dysfunctional and failed initiative. This paper seeks to analyze the challenges facing the evolution of the G5 Sahel towards regional security integration. Following the first part, which examines security regionalism or the regionalization of security in a conceptual and theoretical framework, the context in which the G5 Sahel Organization was created is examined within the approach of the Copenhagen School's Regional Security Complex. It focuses on what the G5 Sahel means in the Sahel as an example of a regional security complex in which violent extremism is securitized. Finally, the reasons for the current dysfunctional appearance of the G5 Sahel and the challenges to its future evolution towards regional security integration are debated around the arguments from the problems of member states, the internal dynamics of the G5 Sahel Organization, and the overabundance of international actors and activities in the region.