AEBR Global Initiative held an online Euro-Latin America forum “International Day for Integration across Borders”, in which representatives of ministries of foreign affairs and border regions from 10 countries in Latin America and Europe participated.

The first part of the meeting was a coordination meeting to probe which countries from Latin America and Europe, along with other African and Asian countries, would be interested in presenting to the United Nations the proposal to declare the 7 June as International Day of Integration across Borders. Inspired by an initiative already put forward by the African countries which in 2011 declared 7 June as African Borders Day, AEBR is promoting the request to the UN through the search for partners in various countries. Currently, work is being done to organize the preparation of a draft resolution, and the submission of this proposal to the United Nations General Assembly in 2021, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of AEBR and the 10th anniversary of the African Borders Day.

In the second part of the meeting, participants showcased the realities, experiences and good practices of facing the current crisis of Covid-19 in European and Latin American border areas: this was the case of the Uruguay River border region and the Titicaca Basin, as well as the situation in the Brazilian state of Paraná. As for Europe, the situation on the Spanish-Portuguese border was addressed through the experience of the Minho River EGTC. The cross-border cooperation expert Hernando Arciniegas, the Secretary General of the Organisation of United Regions (ORU-FOGAR), Carles Llorens, and AEBR Secretary General, Martín Guillermo Ramírez, offered their vision of the regional and global approach faced by international borders during the Covid-19 crisis.

Emphasis was placed on the asymmetries and structural limitations that borders regions face which have become evident with the current pandemic, confirming the need for cross-border integration processes to have coordinated responses in border areas.

As conclusions of this forum, it was agreed to prepare a dossier with information about the proposal to the United Nations. AEBR Global Initiative’s team will send this dossier to interested stakeholders in September so that local, regional and national authorities can familiarise with this proposal and form working groups. Likewise, a new meeting will be organized in the second semester of 2020 to keep on exchanging experiences and good practices in the area of CBC, and proceed with further elaboration of the 7 June proposal.