06.12.2023. Moshi, Tanzania. The IOM African Capacity Building Centre (ACBC) in coordination with the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania (URT) and the Government of the Republic of Kenya is today, concluding a training workshop on Health, Border, and Mobility Management (HBMM) and related themes for border agencies officials. The training is aimed at mainstreaming health in both health and non-health functions at Points of Entry (POEs) including immigration, customs, and police among others, to equip them with knowledge and skills to respond to and mitigate the spread of communicable diseases while keeping the POEs open for trade and travel and ensuring national security in a whole of government and whole of society approach. The HBMM component of the training highlights IOM’s role in supporting governments and communities to build health systems that are responsive to the needs of migrants and mobile populations, in line with the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR) and, more broadly, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) .
The training is being facilitated by the IOM ACBC as part of its implementation of the regional project, “Enhancing Border Personnel’s Capacities to Respond to and Mitigate the Spread of Communicable Diseases – ECRM’ with funding support from the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands’ Ministry of Justice and Security, Directorate of Repatriation and Departure Service (R&DS). The objective of the regional project is to provide frontline officials at the points of entry (PoE) with knowledge and skills to minimize the risk of infection and transmission and to control and contain any communicable diseases of public health concern.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Jonathan Martens, ACBC Centre Manager welcomed the Kenya and Tanzania delegations to the ACBC. He informed them that the ACBC was established in 2009 at the request of the IOM African Member States who asked for support in building their capacities in managing migration, and that delegates should therefore feel at home and consider this ‘their Centre’. He shared that since the Centre opened its doors, it had been involved in strengthening institutional capacities and individual knowledge and skills of more than 8000 officials on various migration management themes for all the 54 IOM African Member States. He wished the delegates a fruitful and successful training and encouraged them to return.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Fakih Bakari Nyakunga, Regional Immigration Officer, Kilimanjaro, expressed appreciation to IOM for arranging the training for border officials from the Kilimanjaro region citing that the training had come at an opportune time as the world was recovering from the Covid-19 Pandemic and at the same time, the East African Community (EAC) was expanding in membership in particular, with countries that had experienced communicable diseases such as Ebola. He opinioned that the timing of the training was timely as it would enhance border agencies’ knowledge and skills so that they can solidify their preparedness and be able to better coordinate emergency response. He encouraged all the participants to not only fully participate in the training, but to also, share the knowledge they would gain from the training with their colleagues that are in the field.
In his closing remarks, Mr Chrispin Njue, representative of the Taveta Border Management Committee (BMC) thanked IOM ACBC for organizing the joint training bringing together various agencies at the border to hold engagement on matters concerning migration and health. He expressed gratitude as the training has been informative and boosted the international cooperation between the two countries (Kenya and Tanzania) and highlighted the urgent need for stakeholders to implement Intraservice, interagency and international cooperation as it was key in strengthening in country and cross border cooperation mechanisms of countries and their partners. He shared that, through engagement during the training workshop, participants have been able to appreciate the link between health & migration, the need to carry out disease surveillance and plan for emergency situation or have various emergency response and contingency plans in place. He shared the training workshop take home quote “We are not safe, until everyone is safe” and concluded his remarks by expressing that, the Taveta OSBP BMC was appreciative of the training opportunity and advocated for more engagements to ensure border agencies constantly capacitated to respond to and mitigate the spread of communicable diseases and handle various crisis efficiently.
The Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands’ Ministry of Justice and Security, Directorate of Repatriation and Departure Services (R&DS) says that, “it is gratifying to see that target countries have benefitted from the ERCM project which was initially R&DS support to selected African Member States through the ACBC to respond to the COVID-19 by enhancing their Border Personnel’s Capacities to Respond to and Mitigate the Spread of the pandemic and that the project had since been reprogrammed to focus on Responding to and Mitigating the Spread of Communicable disease and keeping borders open to trade and travel while preventing criminal activities”. The R&DS further submits that through such partnerships, migration can be better managed and that it hopes that officials who benefitted from the training will henceforth, deploy knowledge and skills gained during the training to minimize the risk of infection and transmission and to control and contain any communicable diseases of public health concern.
In his vote of thanks, Mr Maurizio Busatti, the Chief of Mission for IOM Tanzania, thanked the ACBC team for the successful completion of the project and expressed his gratitude to the Kingdom of the Netherlands for the financial support availed to IOM to assist in building the capacities of project target countries border personnel knowledge and skills on minimizing the risk of infection and transmission and to control and contain any communicable diseases of public health concern relevant at the local, national and regional context. He expressed his appreciation that the workshop incorporated border and health-relevant aspects of migration and touched on the legal and policy frameworks and strategies that are migrant-inclusive in emergency preparedness and response.
It is envisaged that participants who participate in the training workshop will share their knowledge and experience from this training with their peers at the respective points of entry they work from to strengthen their peers’ capacity to minimize the risk of infection and transmission and to control and contain any communicable diseases of public health concern thus ensure health security and safety for all.
For more information on ACBC Immigration and Border Governance issues contact Mpilo Nkomo on: +255 (0) 785 736 072 or E-mail: mnkomo@iom.int