The conference was convened in light of the growing number of refugees and irregular migrants moving southwards from the Horn of Africa and Great Lakes Region to South Africa and the need to ensure a coordinated and effective response by governments and civil society.

Delegates to the conference discussed various proposals on how to better address mixed migratory flows in a protection-sensitive manner.  Issues discussed included strengthening national institutions responsible for refugee and immigration affairs; improving the collection and analysis of migration data; and improving the identification of persons in need of protection and/or assistance, such as refugees, victims of trafficking and unaccompanied minors.  

Lawrence Masha, Tanzanian Minister of Home Affairs, opened the conference, alongside UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Ms. Erika Feller and IOM’s Director of the Department of Migration Management, Ms. Irena Vojackova-Sollorano.

In his opening remarks, the Minister of Home Affairs thanked UNHCR and IOM for their support in convening the conference and reiterated the need for greater cooperation among all stakeholders in responding to the challenges of mixed migration flows.

“Inter-state cooperation is very important in order to avoid situations in which people are pushed backwards and forwards between two or more countries,” Mr Masha noted. “Migrants can be a catalyst of economic development; both as a source of labour and as a source of remittances. And although states have the sovereign right to determine who to admit and who to expel from their territories, such rights should be exercised in conformity with international human rights and refugee law. People with valid claims to refugee status should be given the opportunity to seek asylum and benefit from protection coming with that status.”

UNHCR and IOM emphasized that people in the region are moving for a variety of reasons, including to improve their economic situation, to flee persecution or armed conflict, or to escape extreme poverty.

“It is vital to rightly identify and protect refugees within these large southbound people movements,” Ms. Feller said. “Somalis for example make up an especially large group of the people fleeing southwards. We have to understand that all Somalis from Central and South Somalia are refugees with a right to protection”. 

IOM’s Irena Vojackova-Sollorano called for the implementation of hands-on measures to solve pending regional migration issues.  “We need concrete mechanisms in order to cope with the regional migratory flows. This requires implementation of sound policies that focus on international protection, concise data gathering, and learning from countries’ experiences.”

It was agreed at the close of the Conference that a Plan of Action would be developed to take forward the key recommendations emerging from the conference.  Delegates agreed on the need to ensure that concrete steps were taken at the national and regional levels as a follow-up to the conference.

The conference was brought to a close by Bernard Membe, Tanzanian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.