IOM Vision
Climate change has been impacting the route and calendars of nomadic herders throughout Western Africa threatening the peaceful cohabitation between all involved stakeholders as competition to access natural sources fuels violence and forced displacements. At the local level, IOM supports its Member States to develop early alert mechanisms and to reinforce local conflict mitigation strategies to pre-empt the risk of conflicts associated with herds movements. At the regional level, IOM supports the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), its Member States, the regional herders' network and its national members, promoting multilateralism by ensuring that ECOWAS remains the forum where international transhumance is managed in a harmonized way.
Transhumance pastoralism in West and Central Africa involves a very large number of individuals (20 million) and animals (70% of the region’s cattle), according to the Food and Agricultural Organization. Insecurity and climate variability have forced shifts in the seasonal migratory routes of transhumant movements throughout West and Central Africa. The past years have seen an escalation of clashes 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 across Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Togo, leading to a hardened stance by coastal countries who opt to close their borders. These policy decisions, however, have not halted the passage of transhumant herds through the coastal countries but made these movements more opaque, while unilateral decisions from countries hinder a coherent and integrated approach.
Recognising these dynamics, multiple intra-regional bodies have convened focused, policy-level discussions to formulate cohesive regional strategies to prevent further risk of tensions in their states, including ECOWAS, accompanied by the largest regional herders' network, the Billital Maroobé Network (Réseau Billital Maroobé in French – RBM), who meet on a regular basis to take stock of the latest transhumance campaigns, grouped along the three primary transhumance corridors. As a result of these cyclical high-level consultations, two core gaps have been highlighted. ECOWAS Member States deplored the region’s lack of unified understanding of transhumant movements, their numbers and routes, and noted the direct impact this has on their ability to make sound policy decisions, and have stressed the need for localised conflict mitigation approaches to successfully address these recurrent conflicts.
Objective
Driving solutions to displacement
Local authorities and communities of all social groups, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and nomadic herders, benefit both directly and indirectly from IOM's interventions. IOM contributes to building the capacity of representatives from the aforementioned entities to establish or strengthen inclusive, transparent and accountable decision-making processes. The decisions made within the various fora supported by IOM to improve services, benefit a larger number of users, either local or those temporarily stationing or crossing the area. The way the activities are carried out will impact the perception of relegation among the various groups, thus contributing to greater social cohesion and stability.
Community stabilization
IOM applies its substantial experience in community stabilization along at-risk zones, as defined by the Transhumance Tracking Tool, to work with local governance structures in communities regularly affected by transhumant movements to define conflict mitigation and resolutions methods. IOM’s programmes in the eight targeted countries (Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and CAR) shall include the following activities:
- Linking local authorities, line ministries and civil society to implement local solutions, including the establishment of mixed communities at borders that include all concerned authorities, leaders and groups of herders. Such activities ensure the inclusion of nomadic population into local community structures.
- Supporting the resolution of potential land tenure issues, through local negotiations and the formalization of traditional tenue in a transparent and participatory manners. This will enable securing pastoral space that has been shrinking due to land grabbing, decentralization and urban development.
- Rehabilitating community infrastructure to cater for the passage or the temporary station of herds (transhumant corridors, water points, markets, etc.).
IOM promotes the participatory and inclusive local decision-making processes to define priority actions while supporting relevant line ministries to directly support communities, who may otherwise be aggrieved, in the prioritization process.
Objective
Contribute to an evidence-based and efficient crisis response system
Pastoral Organisations (national and regional) and relevant line Ministries involved in the implementation of the ECOWAS Transhumance Protocol will benefit from regional flow monitoring. Local Mapping and Early Alert System will be aimed at local authorities and relevant civil society receiving the information and informing conflict mitigation strategies at the local level. Ultimately, the data provided through the Regional Flow Monitoring and the capacity developed to transfer the tools to the respective governments and civil society will inform annual Transhumance campaigns and the regional framework dedicated to Transhumance.
Displacement tracking - rename
IOM supports its Member States along the regional transhumance corridors to develop and apply a unified data collection mechanism to inform sound policies as it pertains to the regional governance of transhumant mobility. To do so, IOM will broaden the application of the Transhumance Tracking Tool in the 14 targetted countries as follows:
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Mapping of transhumance corridors (including water points, grazing areas, markets, border posts, inter alia);
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Early Alert 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 materialising;
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Regional Transhumance Movement Tracking for the enhanced provision of reliable and unified analysis to enable regional decision-making.
Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Niger, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic
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.