Harmonising guidelines for the movement of persons during health crises in the COMESA region

Harmonising guidelines for the movement of persons during health crises in the COMESA region
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The COVID-19 pandemic hindered the mobility of goods, services and people all around the world and regional and national authorities struggled to find common guidelines which could be applied homogenously. This was the case also for the Eastern and Southern African region, where different Regional Economic Communities (RECs) operate simultaneously, resulting in overlapping memberships with several countries in the region belonging to various RECs. Of these, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) represents the largest of the eight RECs and comprises 21 Member States.

The economic impact of the pandemic on COMESA Member States was severe with business closures, disruption of agricultural production, and loss of employment and revenue, affecting small-scale cross-border traders, the majority of whom are women or young people.

To offset these consequences, COMESA adopted two main instruments that would regulate the border traffic: “Guidelines for the Movement of Goods and Services across the COMESA Region” and “COMESA-EAC-SACD Tripartite Guidelines on Trade and Transport Facilitation for the movement of persons, goods and services across the tripartite region during the COVID-19 pandemic”.

There was further need to complement these guidelines, hence the COMESA Secretariat requested support from Migration EU eXpertise Initiative (MIEUX+) funded by the European Union and implemented by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, to conduct capacity building as well as awareness raising activities and communication materials targeting stakeholders at the borders, including border officials, women’s trade association as well as individuals crossing border posts.

Concretely, MIEUX+ supported the exchange of experiences between African and European Member States and regional organisations, facilitating dialogue among these stakeholders to advance in the management of border during a health crisis; built the capacities of COMESA MS border officials in the area of border governance; and produced communication materials to raise awareness among stakeholders at COMESA MS borders, including migrants and mobile populations, of measures in place to contain the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The initial assessment entailed several consultative meetings on the main challenges and lessons learned following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic with key stakeholders from selected border posts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The report highlighted several challenges for Border Management in light of the pandemic, namely, the lack of policy coherence; the lack of coordination mechanisms at regional and national levels; uneven domestication of regional Border Management guidelines; the lack of policy coherence; and differences in approaches to managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

In light of these findings, a training course on border management during health crises was produced using a participatory approach. The relevance of all the activities and materials produced will extend beyond the COVID-19 pandemic to cover possible future health crises.

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ICMPD, EU, Secretariat of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), COMESA Federation of Women in Business