North African states face significant transnational challenges, including, but not limited to, counterterrorism, migration and illicit trade. The latter includes products and services from drugs and weapons to subsidized and counterfeit goods as well as the smuggling and trafficking of humans.
These activities are most prevalent in borderlands where the states in question have often only exercised limited authority over the local populations. There is a policy debate over what should be done to address such activities. Should North African states seek to ‘formalize the informal’?
Or, is informality the most responsive and realistic means for border communities to sustain themselves in an environment where the state possesses limited capacity and resources to govern its borderlands?
The event will seek to identify policy options for North African policymakers to move beyond security-based approaches to pursue stabilization-based approaches and sustainable development centred around community-resilience models in the region’s borderlands.
Please note the video is not a recording of the event itself, but a series of interviews related to it.
