The Social Dimension of Regional Integration in ECOWAS

uniform legislation. In the context of ECOWAS, harmonisation has involved crafting a
regional statute which, though not replacing national legislation, entitles citizens within the
Community to equal treatment under the domestic laws of each Member State. This is a
particularly important step in a community with policies for the free movement of workers
so as to ensure that, legally speaking, foreigner workers are not discriminated against
compared to national workers. Uniform laws on the other hand go much further and are
designed to replace national statutes with a single shared law or, one might say, a
community code. To date, ECOWAS appears only to be contemplating the harmonization
of West African labour and social security legislation. 50 That said, this approach is in
contrast to other plans in the sub-region for creating uniform statutes in the area of
employment law.
5.2. Organization for the Harmonisation of
Business Law in Africa (OHADA)
A further example of potential integration “overlap” in West Africa, particularly with
respect to legal harmonisation, is seen when one considers the work of the Organization for
the Harmonisation of Business Law in Africa (OHADA). 51 This organization is a regional
grouping of 16 predominantly francophone and civil law countries, nine of which are
simultaneously members of WAEMU and ECOWAS. 52 OHADA’s stated purpose is to
reduce trade barriers and facilitate investments within its Member States through business
law harmonisation. But in spite of its name, the organization’s mandate extends beyond
legal reform and harmonisation of commercial law into the field of employment law – an
intention explicitly mentioned in the OHADA treaty as one of its areas of competence. 53
Following a decision by the OHADA Council, preparatory work has already begun on
drafting a labour code drawing on ILO technical assistance and with the participation of
labour ministries and national social partners (ILO 2003c: 41). 54 One important difference
between ECOWAS and OHADA, however, is that OHADA, once again in spite of its
name, is in actual fact developing uniform laws to supersede the national legislation of
Member States.
One must then ask how ECOWAS’ efforts at legal harmonisation, particularly in the field
of employment law, will proceed given the similar objectives and overlapping membership
between OHADA and ECOWAS countries and the progress OHADA has already made on
labour law and other legal reforms. The potential for contrasting policy points of view and
even legal dissonance within ECOWAS is a real possibility as long as there are different
and uncoordinated “harmonisation” projects at work. To avoid the risk of duplicated
efforts and potentially incoherent results, the ECOWAS Secretariat is now considering
how the OHADA framework might be adapted to synchronize business law in the
remaining ECOWAS countries. This same framework may be similarly applied to other
legal efforts in West Africa in the area of labour and employment law, providing once
50 In addition to labour law and social security law, however, ECOWAS also intends to harmonise
national investment legislation ultimately leading to the adoption of a single Community investment
code (Treaty of ECOWAS, 1993, Art. 3(2)(i)).
51 L’Organisation pour l'Harmonisation en Afrique du Droit des Affaires, online:
.
52 See Annex 4.
53 Treaty on the Harmonisation of Business Law in Africa (1993), Title I, Art. 2.
54 Completion of the uniform labour code is expected for January 2006.
18 Working paper No. 49