By Marion Dehier

IOM Uganda and the Uganda Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control (DCIC) have completed onsite MIDAS monitoring and capacity building missions at eight Border Crossing Points (BCPs).

MIDAS is the Migration Information and Data Analysis System developed by IOM. It can collect, process and record information for the purpose of identification of travelers, data collection and analysis. The collected information is key to understanding migration dynamics and mobility patterns. This can tremendously boost the ability of the Government of Uganda to manage borders while developing evidence-based migration policies.

The missions covered Ntoroko, Bunagana, Cyanika, Lwakhakha and Suam BCPS (in Southern, Western and East Uganda), as well as Afoji, Goli and Vurra BCPs along borders with South Sudan and Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This activity is part of the Better Migration Management (BMM), a regional, multi-year, multi-partner programme that aims at improving migration management in the Horn of Africa region. The BMM is funded by the European Union and Germany. IOM is one of the implementing partners of the programme, alongside the British Council, CIVIPOL, Expertise France, GIZ, Italian Department of Public Security (IDoPS) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). 

In 2016, MIDAS was installed at eight BCPs in Uganda and handed over to the Ugandan Government. At that time, Johnson Asiimwe and other DCIC IT officers were trained by IOM on MIDAS technical aspects. Asiimwe is now in charge of conducting infrastructure and equipment assessments and was part of the latest monitoring visits.