COMESA III

Description
The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) was established in 1994 and has currently 21 Member States. In terms of migration, the number of international migrants has increased in the region over the last decade, from 6 million in 2010 to 9.6 million in 2019. Migration in the COMESA region has been fuelled by both previous and ongoing conflicts, tensions and political instability.

The economic impact of the pandemic on COMESA MS is serious, with business closures, disruption of agricultural production, and loss of employment and revenue. In this context, COMESA adopted Guidelines for the movement of persons, goods and services. However, there is a need to complement these Guidelines and COMESA Secretariat requested support from MIEUX+ to respond to this need.

MIEUX+ and COMESA joined forced and co-created a training course on border management in health crises, while building on lessons learnt and the COMESA-EAC-SADC "Tripartite Guidelines on Trade and Transport Facilitation for the Movement of Persons, Goods and Services across the Tripartite region during Covid-19 Pandemic" of July 2020.

The course is being piloted with border management officers from select COMESA MS.