The FMM West Africa Project suppport the ECOWAS Commission in Enhancing the security and compatibility of travel documents in the region
ECOWAS, with support from FMM West Africa Project (EU-ECOWAS-funded), Holds High-Level Meeting on Travel Documents, Consolidates Member States Efforts to Facilitate Cross-Border Mobility in the Region
The ECOWAS Commission with its Free Movement and Tourism Directorate is hosting a High-Level Immigration and Consular Officials Meeting from 24-26 February, 2015, in Dakar, Senegal. The meeting focuses on enhanced security features of the ECOWAS Biometric Identity Card; improved migration data exchange and advancement of free movement facilitation in the region. The three-day event brings together Heads of ECOWAS Member States’ Immigration and Consular Services; ECOWAS Trade, Customs, Industry and Free Movement Commissioner and Department officials; other government experts and international organizations, including IOM.
West Africa is one of Africa’s most mobile regions. Intra-regional migration represents a large part of its cross-border movements, and has widely been recognized as key to the region’s economic growth and stability. Therefore, the need to facilitate bona fide movement and restrict irregular border crossing, to tackle subsequent security challenges, is of increased importance to the ECOWAS Commission and its Member States.
In addressing this need, ECOWAS and its Member States have decided on the development of the ECOWAS National Biometric Identity Card to be used as travel document within the region in place of the ECOWAS Travel Certificate, the production of which will be ceased. Produced as key recommendation by the ECOWAS Heads of Immigration meeting held last December, also in Dakar, the introduction of the Identity Card was adopted by the Member States at the highest level at its Heads of State and Authority meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, at the end of 2014.
IOM is supporting this week’s ECOWAS Travel Documents meeting within the Immigration and Border Management component of the EU and ECOWAS-funded Project to Support Free Movement of Persons and Migration in West Africa (FMM West Africa) and its Travel Document Harmonization activity. “As part of the project, an expert assessment to analyze the current status of the ECOWAS Biometric Identity Card development as well as to provide recommendations for a way forward had been carried out by IOM in 2014. We thus see this as continuation of the long-term support to the ECOWAS Commission towards its Biometric Identity Card Initiative”, says Ms Carmela Godeau, IOM Regional Director for West and Central Africa.
The Project “Support to Free Movement of Persons and Migration in West Africa” (FMM West Africa) is funded jointly by the European Union and ECOWAS, and implemented by the Consortium of Partners: IOM, ICMPD and ILO.