Madagascar - IOM, in cooperation with the Directorate for Intelligence, Immigration and Emigration Control of Madagascar’s Ministry of Public Security, last week held a three-day awareness raising workshop on concepts and practices of integrated border management.

Border management remains a crucial issue in Madagascar, a country still recovering from a five-year political crisis (2009 - 2014) that significantly degraded the capacity of the State to police its borders. With more than 5,000 km of coastline and its strategic location across the Mozambique Channel in the western Indian Ocean, the porosity of borders has been conducive to transnational and national criminal and illegal activities.

The workshop is part of an 18-month joint UN initiative that seeks to support security sector reform in Madagascar. Under the initiative, funded by the UN Peace Building Fund (PBF), which brings together IOM, UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA and OHCHR, IOM is leading the implementation of a multi-faceted border management component.

“In an increasingly mobile world, efficient border and immigration management policies and structures, supported by coordinated risk assessment, and by professional and well trained border and immigration officers, are the cornerstones to secure borders that enable safe and orderly migration,” said IOM Madagascar Head of Office Daniel Silva y Poveda.

Participants in the workshop included representatives from all the key governmental organisations working on border management, including the Ministry of Public Security, the Malagasy Customs, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Transportation, the Gendarmerie, and the Prime Minister’s Office.

The programme was designed to improve their understanding of the significance of integrated border management and highlighted the need for interconnectivity and complementarity between departments.

As the UN Migration Agency, IOM is increasingly called upon by States to assist in addressing complex border management challenges. Its Immigration and Border Management (IBM) portfolio comprises some 200 projects, involving several hundred predominantly field-based staff.

For further information, please contact Daniel Silva y Poveda at IOM Madagascar, Tel: +261.32565 4954, Email: dsilva@iom.int