ABOUT

Regional integration is one of the priorities of Africa as stipulated in Agenda 2063, with the free movement of persons as one of its pillars. Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are pillars of Africa’s continental integration and driving the free movement of person agenda.

The first edition of the State of Migration in East and Horn of Africa Report provides critical insights on how governments, regional economic communities, citizens, and migrants within East and the Horn of Africa can seize the benefits of regional integration and human mobility across numerous policy areas, including trade, labour mobility, border management, digitalization, health, gender, climate change, and sustainable reintegration. It is co-published by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the East African Community (EAC) and Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

  Download full report. 

  Download Executive Summary

KEY FINDINGS

The Report has established that trade and labour mobility are key benefits of regional integration and human mobility. Integrated border management and digitalization are key enablers of movement of people, goods and services. Cross-border health, climate change and gender are critical to making human mobility safe.

The report is informed by the EAC’s Common Market Protocol (CMP), IGAD’s Free Movement of Persons Protocol (FMP), and existing bilateral arrangements between partner states, as well as the African Union’s Agenda 2063, Regional Integration Report, and Multidimensional Regional Integration Index.

Its 12 chapters cover migration and mobility trends, trade, labour mobility, cross-border health, climate change, sustainable reintegration, gender, integrated border management, digitalization, and the Global Compact for Migration.

CHAPTER 1 - Introduction

Regional integration is a process whereby countries agree to cooperate through common political, economic, legal, and social institutions at the regional and continental levels. The mobility of persons is one of the critical dimensions of regional integration. Human mobility covers all forms of movement of persons (including tourists, students, and short-term and long-term workers) and thus reflects a wider and more diverse range of movements than the term “migration.” The report argues that human mobility covers five dimensions: the right to entry, the right to work, the right to residence, the right to establishment and the right to return. 

📖 Read the Full Chapter | 🎬 Watch author’s message

CHAPTER 2 - Trends of Migration and Mobility

Migration and mobility trends in East and Horn of Africa are highly complex. 87 per cent of the 8.5 million international migrants in the region originated from the region. Labour migration represents a key component of the mobility landscape, with 4.7 million migrant workers. The region is also home to 22.3 million displaced persons, including 16.9 million internally displaced persons and 5.4 million refugees and asylum seekers. Conflict, violence, poverty and climate-related disasters continue to be leading drivers of migration and mobility in the region. Efforts by the East African Community (EAC) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) are ongoing to strengthen their respective migration data governance systems, including through establishing regional technical working groups and providing technical support to Member States. Although significant data gaps persist, these initiatives aim to enhance the region’s capacity to advance evidence-based migration policymaking, which can promote regional integration. 

📖 Read the Full Chapter  | 🎬 Watch author’s message

CHAPTER 3 - Trade Integration for Labor Mobility

Regional integration fosters trade. Intra-EAC trade, for instance, increased to $4.36 billion USD in 2021 from 3.36 billion USD in 2020.  Human mobility is critical to enabling trade, given that trade in goods or services is facilitated by people.  The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has the potential to enhance trade and mobility in the region through the implementation of the agreed trade in goods, trade in services and investment commitments. Boosting regional trade and mobility warrants, among other things, equally facilitating human mobility through adopted protocols by the RECs and the African Union, as well as establishing appropriate coordination mechanisms, addressing non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to trade, promoting industrialization and value addition, and diversifying the infrastructure financing mix. 

📖 Read the Full Chapter | 🎬 Watch author’s message

CHAPTER 4 - Regional Integration for Labor Mobility

Regional integration advances labour mobility by eliminating structural and legal barriers through policy-making processes.  Access to work, mutual recognition of skills, and transferability of social security benefits are critical to advance labour migration. The provisions for migrant workers’ access to the labour market in the region vary between the East African Community (EAC) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in terms of admission to the territory of another State for labour purposes (visa and residence permit requirements), access to employment (work permits) and rights in the workplace. The EAC has encouraged its Member States to remove barriers to access employment, such as work permit fees for EAC Member States. IGAD is in the process of creating an enabling environment for the free movement of workers, including through its recently adopted free movement of persons protocol, and is on course to develop a regional qualifications framework. 

📖 Read the Full Chapter | 🎬 Watch author’s message

CHAPTER 5 - Fostering inclusive and migration-responsive health system

Regional integration and human mobility require people-centred health systems that are responsive to migrants’ health needs. A mobility-responsive primary health-care system, with cross-border universal health coverage (UHC) that affirmatively include nationals of the East and Horn of Africa (EHoA) region, together with social protection mechanisms and policies that act at multisector levels to address the social determinants of migrants’ health, are essential elements for realizing regional health goals and sustaining free movement regimes and integration in EHoA. The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic is a reminder that ill health can have catastrophic effects, including on sustainability of trade and movement, and that social inequalities represent a risk for public health. The advancement of regional integration processes in EHoA offers a new lens and scope for renewed inter-sector and inter-State cooperation and action on health and migration. 

📖 Read the Full Chapter | 🎬 Watch author’s message

CHAPTER 6 - Regional integration, human mobility and climate change

Disasters, climate change and environmental degradation have increasingly impacted and heightened human mobility in the East and Horn of Africa region. Mobility patterns are constantly changing due to increases in the frequency and severity of droughts and floods, as well as rising temperatures, land degradation, desertification and related water and food insecurity. Regional integration provides valuable opportunities for inter-State collaboration in the development and implementation of measures to address these issues. As seen in the adoption of the 2022 Kampala Ministerial Declaration on Migration, Environment and Climate Change, regional integration provides a valuable opportunity to address adverse impacts of climate change on people and livestock and enhance cooperation on the climate change and mobility crisis.   

📖 Read the Full Chapter | 🎬 Watch author’s message

CHAPTER 7 - Orderly migration and sustainable reintegration

Sustainable reintegration is an important aspect of migration management in the East and Horn of Africa region due to the increasing number of returns over time. Sustainable reintegration should be 

understood to include accommodating human mobility as an option, rather than only promoting static and permanent settlement of migrants. It focuses on creating stable and well developed social, economic and political environment for return migrants.  EAC and IGAD could enhance interregional collaboration and dialogues, creating a regional platform for EHoA countries to negotiate as a bloc for the return and reintegration of their citizens, including with other relevant regional blocs such as the Southern African Development Community, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the European Union.

📖  Read the Full Chapter | 🎬 Watch author’s message

CHAPTER 8 - Advancing gender equality and human mobility

Regional integration has led to the development of policy frameworks that have enhanced the mobility of women. The EAC Common Market Protocol (EAC-CMP) recognizes the need for free movement for women and youth. The IGAD Free Movement of Persons Protocol (IGAD-FMP) also recognizes the importance of gender-responsive approaches. Despite constituting over 60 per cent of the East and Horn of Africa population and over 50 per cent of entrepreneurs in the region, however, their representation in positions of financial and economic power is limited. This is attributed to gender norms and cultural attitudes against women’s resource ownership, as well as non-tariff barriers that impede cross-border trade run by women, among other reasons. Gender-disaggregated data are also limited, and ongoing initiatives for the production and use of gender-disaggregated statistics in all sectors can help address this challenge. 

📖  Read the Full Chapter | 🎬 Watch author’s message

CHAPTER 9 - The nexus between regional integration and mobility: integrated border management as an enabler

Integrated border management (IBM) is an enabler of the movement of goods, services and people and is equally a catalyst for accelerating regional integration. The adoption of the EAC Passport is the most advanced manifestation of mobility facilitation in the region. Similarly, one-stop border posts (OSBPs), promoted and adopted by several Member States in the region, demonstrate the promise and potential of IBM to advance better human mobility. Challenges to the progressive implementation of IBM include varying levels of implementation of the mechanism within partnering States and the unforeseen impact of OSBPs on border communities. Several options for strengthening the operations of OSBPs could be considered, including aligning the cross-border flow of business and integrating systems for managing information across national borders. 

📖  Read the Full Chapter | 🎬 Watch author’s message

CHAPTER 10 - Digitalization and Human Mobility

Regional integration unlocks digitalization, as it encourages Regional Economic Communities and Member States to harmonize frameworks and build digital infrastructure.  The East African Community (EAC), Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and their Member States have embraced digital technologies to enable human and livestock mobility in the region. While there is notable progress with regard to digitization relative to facilitating human mobility, much more is required to reap the full benefits of regional integration. Regional Economic Communities and their Member States could step up their efforts to fully harness the potential of digital governance for regional integration and enhancing human mobility.  

📖  Read the Full Chapter | 🎬 Watch author’s message

CHAPTER 11 - Complementing the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration and the Mobility dimensions of regional integration

Regional integration and the implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration are mutually reinforcing. The Global Compact for Migration provides platforms including the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) and financing mechanisms such as The Migration Multi-partner Trust Fund (MMPTF). The East African Community (EAC) and Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Regional Consultative Processes on migration (RCPs) contribute to the implementation of the Global Compact for Migration. The IGAD Thirteenth Regional Consultative Process meeting in August 2021 was dedicated to sharing States’ experience on the implementation of the Global Compact for Migration in view of the regional review report that informed the IMRF in 2022. Lack of regional implementation frameworks and limited finance are among the challenges facing the implementation of the Global Compact for Migration in the region. 

📖  Read the Full Chapter | 🎬 Watch author’s message

CHAPTER 12 - Conclusion

The findings in this report affirm that regional integration across its various dimensions advances human mobility that is safe, orderly and regular. Through the lens of two RECs, the report concludes that their legal, policy, and regulatory frameworks provide a sound basis for promoting safe, orderly, and regular migration and mobility. Furthermore, movement of persons within and across borders of Member States is at the heart of attaining regional integration and is intimately connected to realizing the socioeconomic development ambitions of the region. While the two RECs and their constitutive Member States are at different stages of embracing and achieving regional integration and human mobility, significant progress is notable across the board. As is argued here and elsewhere, the benefits of regional integration and mobility to citizens and States far outweigh the costs. 

📖  Read the Full Chapter | 🎬 Watch author’s message

OUTREACH

Since its publication, IOM has launched the report in several global capitals and centers of influence – including Nairobi, Kenya; Brussels, Belgium; and Washington, D.C., United States – and convened high-level policy dialogue in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (View coverage of the Nairobi, Washington, D.C., Brussels, and Addis Ababa events).

IOM continues to share the report’s findings and recommendations in major migration and mobility platforms in Africa and globally.