Panapress
Saturday, May 10, 2008
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Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Government officials from East African countries will begin a workshop here 12 May in a bid to improve inter-state and intra-regi o nal cooperation on migration management.Policy and operational challenges and opportunities associated with migration in East Africa will also be addressed, official sources told PANA Saturday.
The event, hosted by the African Union Commission (AUC), Inter-Governmental Auth ority on Development (IGAD) and International Organisation for Migration (IOM), w ill also aim to strengthen cooperation between IGAD member states and transit mi g ration countries such as Chad, Egypt, Libya, Niger, Tunisia and Yemen.
The workshop, the first of its kind for the sub-region, followed various politic al developments concerning migration in Africa, including the implementation of t he AU strategic framework for a migration policy in Africa, and a joint EU-Afric a Declaration on Migration and Development, aimed at enhancing cooperation on mig r ation management between the two continents.
The workshop will also set the stage for the launching of a Regional Consultativ e Process (RCP) on migration for IGAD countries, comprising Djibouti, Ethiopia, K enya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, who had come together in the early 1980s to fin d a regional approach to tackle widespread famine, ecological degradation and ext r eme economic hardship in East Africa, caused by recurring severe droughts and na t ural disasters in the 1970s.
With these issues still outstanding in the new millennium, forcing many people t o migrate within or out of the region often irregularly, the creation of an RCP i n one of the few regions in the world without such a migration forum and process , will allow for regular dialogue between IGAD members as well as the consolidati o n of existing efforts to cooperate on migration issues, and to establish new one s with other transit and destination countries.
The body will also help to build the capacity of member countries on migration m anagement, with a particular focus on the role of migration on social and econom i c development.
An operational framework for the IRCP will be proposed on the concluding day of the workshop, which is expected to work out ways of promoting a dialogue on migr a tion for the whole of the East Africa region and international organisations, in c luding IOM and other stakeholders.
The IOM and partners are also to support the IGAD secretariat to develop a commo n regional migration policy that would harmonise laws, standards and procedures,
and share information on migration issues.
The workshop is funded by the European Commission (EC) and various European gove rnments as part of the EU-Africa dialogue on migration management issues in gene r al, and the fight against irregular migration in particular.
Source: Panapress, May 10, 2008