Nairobi – A workshop meant to foster inter-agency and inter-governmental cooperation on immigration and border management (IBM) took place on April 16-17, 2019 at IOM’s Regional Office for East and Horn of Africa.

The workshop brought together immigration, customs, and border security officials from seven Member States in the Horn of Africa region, namely: Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda to discuss IBM-related opportunities and challenges at bilateral and multilateral-levels.

The gathering was part of the Better Migration Management (BMM) programme, a regional, multi-year, multi-partner programme that aims at improving migration management in the Horn of Africa. The BMM is funded by the European Union and Germany. IOM is one of the implementing partners of the programme, alongside the British Council, CIVIPOL, Expertise France, GIZ, Italian Department of Public Security (IDoPS) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Over the course of two days, delegations from the Member States developed work plans for future programming that strongly reflected inter-agency and inter-governmental cooperation and included cross-cutting activities that encompass multiple components of the BMM.      

Several breakthroughs were achieved through bilateral meetings between the delegations, pushing forward the agenda of joint assessments at border posts, joint trainings for border officials, the opening of one-stop border posts at critical borders, establishing integrated border management committees (IBMCs) and setting up information exchange mechanisms at interagency and intergovernmental-levels.

In the inaugural address, Mr. Alexander Muteshi, the Director of Kenya’s State Department of Immigration, Border Control and Citizen Services, and a champion of regional and bilateral cooperation on border management, emphasized that "migration carries a multi-dimensional mandate and one agency cannot manage migration. An inter-agency approach focusing on coordinated border management is a more effective method to implement in the region".

His sentiments were echoed by Mr. Jeffrey Labovitz, IOM’s Regional Director for East and Horn of Africa, who added that "with the increasing complexity of migration flows in the region, a multi-agency approach is required to effectively undertake migration management, balancing assistance to vulnerable migrants with security".  

The regional workshop was also successful in following up on the “Good Practices” developed during previous November 2018 workshop and converting them into concrete activities. Member states endorsed an interagency and intergovernmental approach to border management and also demonstrated strong support for the BMM programme and the recently signed Global Compact for Migration (GCM).