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Paper short abstract:

The study investigates the impact of the African Union border re-demarcation exercise on Malawian and Mozambican borderland communities showcasing how the AUBP’s realignment or transformation of borders from barriers to bridges is creating serious unintended consequences for civilian populations.

Paper long abstract:

On 7 December 2017, the Mozambican border patrol police shot dead a 43-year-old Malawian in Makanjira along the Mozambique-Malawi border, after a group of Malawian peasants protested the uprooting of their subsistence crops by the Mozambican authorities. Malawi and Mozambique were, from 2008, involved in a World Bank-funded boundary retracing exercise under the African Union Border Program (AUBP) which saw Malawi losing about ten square kilometres of land to Mozambique. Six Malawian villages, with about 12000 people suddenly found themselves in Mozambican territory with inhabitants losing their nationhood, land and were subjected to abuse/violence after Mozambique began its effective occupation in 2011 through beacon installations, patrols and raids. Allegedly, this was done without proper consultation with the affected communities. Despite numerous civilian defiances/responses and diplomatic manoeuvres to pacify the situation, tensions and sporadic clashes have come to characterise life within the borderland, with many peasants living in perpetual fear and uncertain-ty. The project, therefore, engages qualitative research methods to investigate how the delimitation exercise has affected the borderland communities from 2008 to the present. It argues that the AUBP’s effort towards eliminating sources of conflict between states by realigning or transforming borders from barriers to bridges creates serious unintended conflict that have consequences for borderland civilian populations. The study offers a platform for African governments and policymakers to reflect and draw critical lessons in the implementation modalities of a program that aimed at ensuring state security at the national level but ended up endangering human security on the local level.