• Regional trade
• NAFTA and CAFTA
• SAARC

Regional trade

In October 2006, COMESA and two developmental organisations embarked on a research project “Trading for Peace”. The project sought to deepen understanding of the links between trade in natural resources, governance and stability in the Great Lakes region. Indeed, the project built collaboration at the community level and among different groups across borders. Consequently, communities have begun to value the relationships they have developed and they are not likely to want the trade disrupted by conflicts.

The evidence of the research shows that:

• trade is a necessary catalyst for building peace in the Great Lakes region, whose populations are extremely interdependent
• fairer trade does not have to wait for peace but it can contribute towards building peace
• it is important that good governance is developed to protect and promote the growth of legitimate trade
• only a relatively small percentage of the financial benefits of natural resource exploitation returns to the communities living and working at the resource-extraction sites
• yet, in comparison with other options, earnings of individual workers at the extractive end of commodity chains appear to offer a good cash return

As a result, the paper indicates the following as a way forward:

• research – exploring the challenges of regional trade reconstruction, and peace-building
• cross-border networking – bringing people together across the borders to find common solutions to common problems, by combining different interests and perspectives into joint cross-border approaches
• institutional capacity building – strengthening regional organisations so that they can effectively ensure the implementation of trade reforms and other cross-border political commitments at the governmental level
• better investment climate in border areas and for cross-border enterprises

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