A significant institutional milestone was recently marked in Niamey with the establishment of the Sahel States Confederation’s Parliament. However, beneath this apparent structural development lies a fundamental question: can credible regional integration truly be forged without genuine democracy, political pluralism, or a direct popular mandate?
In Niamey, the symbolism was meticulously orchestrated. In late August 2026, representatives from Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger officially inaugurated the confederal Parliament of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). This new body, designed to contribute to the Confederation’s formation, comprises forty-five deputies, with fifteen allocated to each member nation. These parliamentarians have already ratified their internal regulations and established three dedicated commissions focusing on defense and security, diplomacy, and development.
On paper, the vision appears compelling: three nations, having departed from ECOWAS, endeavoring to construct their own shared institutions. Official pronouncements position the Parliament as a key expression of newfound sovereignty and Sahelian integration.
Yet, a troubling question persists: whom do these deputies genuinely represent?
An architecture strikingly similar to ECOWAS
The inherent paradox is stark. After condemning ECOWAS as an organization detached from its populace and lacking sufficient sovereignty, the AES has adopted several of its institutional mechanisms: a confederal structure, common political bodies, and now a Parliament tasked with addressing issues pertinent to the populations of member states.
The comparison becomes particularly unsettling when examining the parliamentary design.
The ECOWAS Parliament features 115 seats. It is conceived as an institution representing the community’s people, and ECOWAS has now declared its objective to have its parliamentarians elected by direct universal suffrage. In current practice, many parliamentarians have been designated from the national assemblies of member states.
In contrast, the AES inaugurates a Parliament with 45 members, fifteen from each of the three countries. While the quantitative difference is clear, the underlying principle remains similar: to establish a regional assembly that supports integration.
Therefore, the true divergence lies not so much in the architectural blueprint as in the fundamental source of political legitimacy.
And it is precisely here that the core issue emerges.
A parliament without popular elections?
The AES confederal Parliament comes into being in three nations currently governed by military authorities who seized power through coups: Mali since 2020-2021, Burkina Faso since 2022, and Niger since 2023. The transitions, initially promised as temporary, have been prolonged, leaving the return to a normal electoral order highly uncertain. International IDEA highlights that military transitions in all three countries have now stretched over several years.
In Burkina Faso, the situation is particularly illustrative. The military leadership has indefinitely postponed elections and progressively curtailed political space. By April 2026, Ibrahim Traoré publicly declared that Burkinabè citizens should ‘forget’ democracy, asserting its unsuitability for the nation. His government had previously dissolved political parties.
In Mali, the 2020 coup, followed by another in 2021, solidified the military’s grip on institutions. Elections slated for 2024 were postponed, with the junta remaining firmly in control. These developments are frequently highlighted in `Mali politics` and `Mali English news` reports, raising concerns for `Mali security` and stability across `West Africa Mali`.
Under such circumstances, how can a truly representative confederal Parliament be constructed?
The question is not to deny the Sahelian peoples their right to regional integration. It is far simpler: should an institution claiming to speak on behalf of the people be composed of representatives whose legitimacy does not directly originate from those very people?
The risk is the creation of a superficial democracy: seats, commissions, internal regulations, speeches, and ceremonies, but very little capacity for ordinary citizens to choose their spokespersons.
The absent element: the citizen
In the capitals of the AES, the lexicon of sovereignty has become ubiquitous. Political sovereignty, economic sovereignty, military sovereignty, monetary sovereignty: the term has become the guiding thread of the new Sahelian doctrine.
However, sovereignty should not solely signify independence from Paris, Washington, or Brussels.
It should also represent the sovereignty of the citizen in relation to their own state.
For what value does national sovereignty hold when citizens cannot freely elect their leaders? What good is a regional Parliament when political parties are banned or marginalized? What is the worth of a Confederation if civil society, journalists, trade unions, and opposition figures lack sufficient space to challenge public decisions? These are critical questions for `Mali politics` and its regional partners.
It is here that the AES reveals its primary contradiction.
Sahelian populations primarily contend with insecurity, poverty, forced displacement, unemployment, weak public services, and rising living costs. Armed groups continue to devastate vast territories. Millions have been displaced by violence across the region. Institutional construction, therefore, cannot be divorced from the daily realities faced by these populations.
A new Parliament will not feed a family. A confederal commission will not replace a destroyed school. Internal regulations will not heal the sick in a rural area deprived of doctors.
The priority should thus be to build institutions that serve citizens, rather than citizens serving institutions.
The paradox of integration replicating what it denounced
The AES was partly founded on a critique of ECOWAS, which authorities in Bamako, Ouagadougou, and Niamey accused of being overly intrusive and defending interests contrary to those of the Sahelian peoples. This perspective is often central in `Mali news today` when discussing regional alliances.
However, the paradox is now striking: the organization presented as an alternative to ECOWAS is reproducing some of its institutional forms while further weakening democratic oversight mechanisms.
The question should be asked directly: why not surpass ECOWAS?
Why not establish an AES Parliament directly elected by citizens? Why not enshrine robust protection for public freedoms in its foundational texts? Why not constitutionally guarantee multipartyism, press freedom, judicial independence, and the peaceful alternation of power?
That would have constituted a genuine institutional revolution.
Instead, the AES risks giving birth to a kind of institutional replica of ECOWAS, but without its democratic ambition.
And Togo in this context?
The presence of Togo in the regional equation also warrants close attention, even though Lomé is not a member of the AES.
Faure Gnassingbé’s Togo now appears increasingly willing to openly embrace political proximity with the Sahelian regimes, even as its own democratic record raises profound concerns.
Since the 2024 constitutional reform, the country has shifted to a parliamentary system where the President of the Council of Ministers holds the majority of executive power. Faure Gnassingbé, who has been in power since 2005 after succeeding his father, assumed this new role in May 2025. This transformation was denounced by the opposition as a means to bypass presidential term limits and prolong his tenure.
More recent events are even more troubling. In June 2025, demonstrations against the government and the constitutional reform resulted in several fatalities, according to human rights organizations. Restrictions on social media and arrests were also reported.
As recently as July 2026, Togolese citizens protested, demanding a return to the former Constitution and denouncing the concentration of power in Faure Gnassingbé’s hands.
Furthermore, the recent arrest of two French journalists in Togo has reignited worries about the media environment, especially since RFI and France 24 remain off-air in the country following restrictions imposed in 2025.
Togo is therefore not merely an observer of West African political reconfiguration. It is progressively becoming an actor whose political model raises significant questions.
The true test will be the people
The AES Parliament may be historic. However, history will judge less its inaugural ceremonies than its actual capacity to genuinely represent its populations.
It is not enough to have a Parliament to have a democracy. It is not enough to have deputies to achieve representation. And it is not enough to invoke the people to govern in their name without seeking their consent.
The AES still has a choice of path.
It can build a Confederation founded on popular sovereignty, political freedom, and the accountability of leaders. Alternatively, it could become an institutional framework designed to consolidate military powers that, under the guise of sovereignty and the fight against insecurity, indefinitely postpone democratic deadlines.
This encapsulates the full ambiguity surrounding this parliamentary birth.
The AES has just established its Parliament. It now remains for it to create its democracy.
For in the Sahel, as elsewhere, true sovereignty should not be that of juntas against external forces. It should be the sovereignty of the people against all forms of power confiscation.
