This note provides the background information for a discussion which was held in Barcelona on December 1, 2010 during the West Africa Regional Parliamentary Working Group on Crisis Prevention and Recovery. The meeting gathered MPs and representatives from the parliamentary administration of 10 West African countries, and representatives from the ECOWAS Parliament. The objective of the discussion was to gather feedback from the parliamentarians on their interactions with their respective political parties, and what they see as opportunities and challenges, to discuss and adopt a set of recommendations on how political parties can play a greater role in post-crisis, state building and conflict prevention. The paper identifies three areas where political parties can play an important role in conflict prevention, specifically in: a) Electoral and Political Violence Prevention; b) Post-Conflict Settings and State-Building ; c) Inclusion of Excluded Groups.