IOM Vision
Climate change impacts nomadic herders' routes and calendars throughout Western and Central Africa, challenging peaceful co-existence as competition over natural resources fuels violence and forced displacement. Through the roll-out and scale-up of the Transhumance Tracking Tool, early alert mechanisms, and conflict mitigation strategies, IOM will support Member States, regional organizations, and herders and farmers associations to promote free movements, peaceful transhumance, and strengthened social cohesion. IOM will also provide technical assistance to ensure that ECOWAS and ECCAS remain the regional fora to manage international transhumance in a harmonized and coordinated way.
Insecurity and climate variability, in addition to demographic growth, and increased urbanization have forced shifts in the seasonal migratory routes of transhumant movements throughout West and Central Africa (Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, Niger, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Senegal). In Mali, an IOM study reported that 15 per cent of herders surveyed had to change their initial itinerary, including 8 per cent to face difficulties in accessing water or pasture. Respondents also mentioned wildfires, decrease of pastoral spaces as issues affecting their mobility. In 2023, in Mauritania, an IOM study reported that 65 per cent of herders surveyed had to change their initial itinerary, and 53 per cent their timing due to the impacts of climate change. Faced with these external pressures, the past years have seen an escalation of clashes in the region between mobile transhumant and sedentary herder and farming communities over access to natural resources, necessitating collective action to pre-empt and mitigate the risk of persistent loss of life and livelihoods. The IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM)'s Transhumance Tracking Tool (TTT), through its early warning tool, recorded 4,072 alerts in 2022 in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Nigeria, including 2,929 events alerts (27% related to conflicts, 7% due to disasters such as wildfires or floods). These conflicts create protection threats in the form of violence and deliberate deprivation for the populations involved, leading to killings, gender-based violence, and denial of freedom of movement, which have a detrimental impact on individual and community mental health and wellbeing. In this context, women and girls are particularly affected regarding access to maternal healthcare services (significantly increasing the rate of maternal mortality among herders’ populations), or access to education (particularly for girls). The increased insecurity around natural resources, including around transhumance, has triggered a hardened stance among some of the coastal countries that have opted to close their borders. These policy decisions, however, have not halted the passage of transhumant herds through the coastal countries, but have instead made these movements more challenging, while unilateral decisions from countries have undermined a coherent and integrated approach toward the management of transhumant mobility in the region.
Recognizing these dynamics, multiple intra-regional bodies have convened targeted policy-level discussions to formulate cohesive regional strategies to prevent further risk of tensions within their States, including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Economic Community for Central Africa States (ECCAS), accompanied by the largest regional herders' network, the Réseau Billital Maroobé (RBM) representing 750,000 herders in 12 countries, who meet regularly to take stock of the latest transhumance campaigns, grouped along the three primary transhumance corridors that cross from North to South of the West and Central Africa region. As a result of these high-level consultations, two core gaps have been highlighted: the region’s lack of unified understanding of transhumant movements, including their numbers and routes, and the direct negative impact this gap has on their ability to make sound policy decisions, as much as stressing the need for localized conflict mitigation approaches to successfully address these recurrent conflicts. In addition, recently, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger shared the intention to opt out from ECOWAS without notice, which could potentially entail additional efforts in promoting free movements.
Objective
Saving lives and protecting people on the move
IOM’s data collection related to transhumance supports:
- The provision of evidence-based reports to pastoral organizations (national and regional) and relevant line ministries involved in the implementation of the ECOWAS Transhumance Protocol;
- Local Mapping and Early Alert Systems to provide information on conflict mitigation strategies to local authorities and relevant civil society organizations at the local level.
Ultimately, the data provided through the TTT and the capacity developed to transfer the tools to the respective governments (nine line ministries) and civil society informs annual transhumance campaigns and the regional framework dedicated to transhumance.
Displacement tracking
IOM supports its Member States along the regional transhumance corridors to develop and apply a unified data collection mechanism to inform sound policies as pertaining to the regional governance of transhumant mobility. The TTT is centred around four main components:
- Herders and cattle mapping – mapping (in)formal transhumant corridors
- Flow monitoring – monitoring the numbers and basic characteristics of people and cattle moving along the corridors
- Early warning system - capturing real-time information on events and conflicts related to livestock mobility throughout the region
- Individual surveys – a deeper dive into the characteristics and motives driving the flows
For the implementation of the TTT, IOM relies on its partnership with pastoral organizations including the RBM, a regional transhumant network of local herders’ associations representing herders in 12 countries in WCA and its network of 750,000 members. Data are collected following the transhumance calendar, and dashboards are generated either monthly or every three months and shared with local actors and governance mechanisms.
To do so, IOM will broaden the application of the Transhumance Tracking Tool as follows:
- Mapping of transhumance corridors (including water points, grazing areas, markets, border posts, among others);
- Production of a regional transhumance report in the West and Central African region, compiling and analysing country reports to provide regional insights.
- Issuing Early Alerts notifying at-risk communities ahead of the arrival of at-risk herds to ensure communities can agree on solutions to facilitate safe passage ahead of clashes materializing;
- Implementing Regional Transhumance Movement Tracking for enhanced provision of reliable and unified analysis to enable regional decision-making.
- Enhancing partnerships with other actors present in the region and looking at ways to leverage big data to the advantage of relevant programming for transhumance.
Objective
Driving solutions to displacement
IOM builds the capacity of representatives from local authorities, local communities, IDPs and nomadic herders to establish or strengthen inclusive, transparent and accountable decision-making processes. Additionally, the decisions that are taken within the various fora supported by IOM benefit a larger number of groups; including local host communities, as well as those temporarily residing in or crossing the area. The way the activities are carried out improve mutual understanding and relations among the various groups, thus contributing to greater social cohesion and stability. Activities will directly benefit 54 local authorities, one regional herder network, and 12 national pastoral organizations.
In addition, IOM data collection related to transhumance supports various networks in the region, such as ECCAS and ECOWAS, as well as local organizations and herders' networks such as Réseau Bilital Maroobe among others). IOM contributes to:
- Risk-informed decision-making and planning at the local level, to mitigate the impacts of disasters linked to climate and disaster risks on natural resources.
- Reinforce capacity on disaster risk management and preparedness, climate resilience, and climate-adapted livelihood strategies.
In doing so, IOM’s work on transhumance contributes to improved economic resilience of communities along transhumance corridors, thereby reducing climate and disaster risks. Activities will directly benefit 15 entities.
Community stabilization
Building on the TTT’s data reports, IOM garners its substantial experience in community stabilization along at-risk zones to work with local governance structures in communities affected by transhumant movements to collectively define solutions in support of improved governance of transhumance, including conflict mitigation and resolution methods.
IOM promotes participatory local decision-making processes to define priority actions while supporting relevant line ministries to respond directly to communities, who may otherwise be aggrieved, in the prioritization process.
IOM’s programmes in the WCA countries will include the following activities:
- Connect local authorities, line ministries and civil society to identify and implement local solutions, including the establishment or revitalization of inclusive decision-making and dialogue mechanisms in border regions that gather all concerned authorities, leaders and groups of herders. Such activities ensure the inclusion of nomadic populations into local community structures and help reinforcing local dialogue and decision-making, including on resource management.
- Support the resolution of potential land tenure issues, through local negotiations and the formalization of traditional tenure in a transparent and participatory manner. This support will enable securing pastoral space that has been shrinking due to land grabbing, decentralization and urban development.
- Rehabilitate community infrastructure to cater for the passage or the temporary station of herds (transhumant corridors, water points, markets, etc.).
Peacebuilding and peace preservation
To promote peace in the region in a context of transhumance and human mobility, IOM supports community reconciliation processes and seeks to mitigate the drivers of conflict. Interventions will include:
- Mapping of existing conflict mitigation mechanisms in communities and supporting conflict resolution processes between herders and farmers along transhumance corridors.
- Supporting participatory local decision-making processes to define priority activities and infrastructures that contribute to conflict mitigation or resolution, notably through protection mainstreaming and inclusion of marginalized voices/groups in peacebuilding activities, including environmental peacebuilding through setting up natural resource management committees and networks, for instance.
- Accompanying relevant line ministries to support communities in their transition away from conflict.
- Implementing community-based MHPSS activities for reconciliation and peacebuilding
Adaptation and disaster risk reduction
Through the TTT’s data reports, IOM along with herders’ networks and governments maps infrastructure and resource availability along transhumance corridors, taking into account the climate and disaster risk and their potential effects on the means of existence (water points, grazing areas, etc.) among local herder and farmer populations. The data drawn from these reports is designed to feed into risk-informed decision-making and planning at the local level; for instance, during the definition of targeted interventions to mitigate the impacts of climate and disaster risks on natural resources. Those interventions will contribute to improving the resilience of the local populations to disaster.
More specifically, the initiatives proposed could serve, among others, to support the following intervention areas:
- Reinforcement of capacity on risk assessment with a focus on natural resources;
- Reinforcement of capacity on preparedness with a focus on livestock and elaboration of response plans;
- Carrying out mitigation interventions to reduce disaster impact on the means of existence of the herders and farmers (reforestation, soil regeneration, restoration and reinforcement of water points);
- Vocational training in support of climate-adapted livelihoods;
- Construction and rehabilitation of climate-adapted public infrastructure;
- Reinforcement of capacity for climate-adapted and climate-resilient agricultural techniques.
Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, Niger, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Senegal
The map used here is for illustration purposes only. Names and boundaries do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by IOM.
Figures are as of 31 December 2023. For more details of IOM's operational capacity in country, please see the IOM Capacity section.
