The GTZ has been supporting CILSS on behalf of the German Federal Government since 1980. CILSS stands for "Comité Permanent Inter-Etats de Lutte contre la Sécheresse dans le Sahel" (Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel) and comprises nine Sahel countries in West Africa, among them also priority area countries for German and international cooperation.

In the Sahel countries, there is a close, cross-border interdependency between desertification and poverty that is increasingly aggravated by each period of drought. The number of conflicts related to access to natural resources is on the rise. CILSS was founded in 1973 in response to the catastrophic situation caused by the drought years between 1968 and 1975. Today, CILSS is a regional competence centre for food security, natural resource management, and combating desertification.

So far the GTZ focuses on supporting the CILSS mandate in the environment sector, the Agenda 21 and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Today, the role and responsibility of CILSS in the field of regional integration is a priority. The CILSS states perceive themselves as a community of solidarity, not just in times of emergency, but also in a regional development context. However, interstate cooperation is still in its infant stages. Against this backdrop, the Federal Government supported CILSS in the following priority areas until end of 2006

• Combating desertification
• Regional integration, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)

with the projects

• Support for CILSS in combating desertification
• Household energy programme (HEP) Sahel

Both projects were attached to the Executive Secretariat in Ouagadougou and report to the GTZ in Burkina Faso.

CILSS’ partners are the European Union, the USA, Canada, France, Italy and the UNCCD Secretariat.

National boundaries are often barriers – nomadic herding in Western Africa

• For further information on the CILSS, see
  http://www.cilssnet.org