Managing borders today.
The thought of distant lands – even in a shrinking, shared, connected and more accessible world – makes us miss a heartbeat or two, even today. While, thanks to Internet and television, there may no longer be much mystery about faraway places, many of us do fondly remember our first passport – photograph, name correctly spelt and the faint smell of fresh glue and buckram – and with it the vision of travel ‘without let or hindrance’ as the citation of this precious document promised, in the name of our country’s king or president.
For years, this booklet in your pocket served this purpose quite adequately, and even became the metaphor for passage, usually to an improved station in life, whether economic, social or political, but then, life changed. Was it the end of the cold war, or was it when cross-border terrorism raised its ugly head and brought the violence of war right to our door-steps, or was it the more subtle change of decolonisation that made scores of new countries and their people part of a more complex global community? Perhaps, it was because all of these came together.
On one hand, military and civil concerns began crossing wires more intensely, as Checkpoint Charlie gave way to 9/11. Thus, today you are faced with this almost invisible and elusive manifold through which individuals seem to slip through and cause immeasurable damage and jeopardise millions of lives in unimaginable ways. A cursory look at the daily news constantly reminds us that this remains one of the single biggest threats to the world of our times.
In every country, including South Africa, border security is thus coordinated among dozens of top-dog agencies from the military, police, intelligence, home office, foreign office, immigration, customs, health, exchange regulators, drug enforcement and anti-terrorist squads. Their budgets provide for inter alia night-vision glasses, electrified fences, all-terrain vehicles and of course, armed patrols.
Beyond border patrols
However, almost in direct contradiction, public officials and diplomats simultaneously talk of ‘soft’ borders. This is because on the other hand, millions of often helpless people are caught in the crossfire of disputed borders. More urgently, hordes of people look justifiably to escape repressive regimes and, as will continue to happen – individuals will seek economic opportunity across borders in large numbers, and this will include not only skilled professionals, scientists and engineers, but also students, casual and seasonal workers, and even day-hawkers among others. For some, this is a last desperate chance to a life.
Thus today, border control coordination agencies also include – refugee relief, humanitarian assistance, special woman and child welfare counselling as well as local and regional authorities on both sides, and yet, a lot more needs to be done if such systems are to effectively address issues such as human trafficking and especially take into consideration the special needs for children. Recently the European Union has mandated that even infants are to be entitled to their own travel documents. How this could be implemented in other parts of the world in practice remains to be seen.
Also today, both the US and the EU are setting aside significant resources so that border control means and media are sufficiently strengthened, not only within their own borders and for their own citizens, but even in seemingly remote African countries – because of the integrated trans-national nature of the chain that is only as strong as the weakest link. For years, as portrayed in many fictional accounts, particular African cities were in fact the points where criminals, drug runners, smugglers and terrorists regularly transited to literally ‘buy off-the-shelf’ identities of choice for their next operation.
The importance of this problem was once again highlighted by President Obama at the recently concluded nuclear summit at Seoul, when he said that all care has to be taken to safeguard every gram of nuclear material … as there are too many bad elements still out there. However, any single all-encompassing solution still seems elusive. This was best highlighted by former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, over a decade ago, during the senate hearings in the aftermath of 9/11. As she had concluded then, there seems to be no silver bullet, even today.
The best defence
The best defence today possibly consists of a layered solution – massive databases and powerful computing engines (like in the Visit US program) that detect anything awry in an identity, rapidly circulating international hot-lists (Interpol), multiple biometrics like fingerprint, facial and iris recognition and eGates that can facilitate automated throughput that reduce delays without compromising security. These are being deployed worldwide in various contexts: such as busy airports (Amsterdam’s Schipol), as well as for day-traders in Africa (DRC-Rwanda), who benefit from the economic boom across a nearby border. Thus for the moment such solutions seem to satisfactorily address the entire range of hard and soft issues involved with international border management.
What of the diminutive booklet called the passport, then? The latest versions come with secret features that are extremely difficult to detect, and well nigh impossible to copy. Your personal details such as the photograph are protected by magic overlays that disappear or disfigure if tampered with. This is further safeguarded through the use of state-of-the-art technologies such as multi-layered polycarbonate pages with intra-layer colour laser engraving. Even the thread that binds the booklet has special features that show up when severed. The new South African Passport is a good example of all this, and while information is rarely disclosed, it is quite likely that credible imitations are yet to surface, even after a few years of its introduction.
Electronic answers?
For many other countries at this forefront like South Africa, the next step is to go electronic. With a polycarbonate page, the insertion of the contactless inlay chip is only a step away. However, along with it must come the public/private key infrastructure, chip readers as well as biometric software licences so that identity verification is automated, rapid, non-repudiable and as per international norms.
The original mandate for the ePassport was for the 20-odd ‘visa waiver’ countries that had a corresponding protocol with the US. But today, its specs are agreed and signed by all of the 189 member countries of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) of the United Nations, thus making it one of the most widely accepted multilateral agreements of our times, but its cost does seem prohibitive for now, and many countries may think long and hard before introducing it.
However, South Africa does have a business case. After all, its international airports are the gateways to more than half of Africa to the rest of the world – for both inbound as well as outbound traffic – with volumes that will continue to grow significantly in the coming years.
Yet today there are also the eGates that can operate entirely without a supporting passport or ePassport, depending entirely on biometric verification. Such solutions could be extremely appropriate and cost-effective for the large volumes of foreign workers in South Africa. In some sense, it could streamline it all at the land borders, but then extreme political will would be required for such a sweeping change. Moreover, policy-makers might say that, for the time being such programmes are implemented under bilateral understanding, and it may take time to find the light of day in a multilateral context.
As always, while technological solutions continue to evolve, decision-making does not always keep pace. Unfortunately, the policy-making and bureaucracy that surrounds border management often seems like a gigantic immovable rock. Hence there is the constant danger that the one might get through and cause untold havoc, or the helpless continue to be exploited, for this Sisyphean reason alone.
However, on a good sunshine day, the silver lining seems reassuring enough. The technology, at its most formidable is hard to beat, and at its simplest, good enough to empower, for people to assert their universal citizenship rights, and thus inherit a freer and safer world.
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