The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, formerly the Executive Secretariat, was inaugurated in January 2007. The inaugural session of the ECOWAS Parliament, based in Abuja, Nigeria, was held in November 2000. In late April 2020 an extraordinary session of the ECOWAS Authority was convened, by videoconference, to address the public health, economic, financial, social, and human security dimensions in West Africa of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The heads of state and of government noted the significant threat posed by the ongoing crisis to the regional integration process and peace and security agenda, and agreed to formulate a collective response plan to address containing the pandemic, as well as a collective post-pandemic economic recovery plan. In January 2003 Community heads of state and of government approved an intraregional ECOWAS Travel Certificate; in 2020 member states were in the process of replacing this with a modernized system of ECOWAS national biometric identity cards.