Proactive Regionalism

The international community has done significant amounts of work to ease the plight of LLS, LDC, and transit countries. In many developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and more recently in economies in transition in Asia and Europe, the work has been carried out in close cooperation with regional organizations of developing countries. Noteworthy success stories are, in Africa, the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Southern African Devel-opment Community (SADC); in Asia, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Economic Co-operation Organization (ECO); and in Latin America, the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR).

International organizations have worked with regional organizations to ensure intergovernmental support to programs; to reduce transaction costs by using local experts and administrative support; and to ensure that new programs are sustain-able. As a result of their concerted efforts, a variety of transport instruments are now being implemented in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

In Africa, two success stories are COMESA and SADC. Both have launched programs aimed at establishing a regional customs transit system, consolidating and extending computerized customs procedures and transport information systems, and setting up joint border inspection posts. Similarly, under the aus-pices of COMESA, Eastern and Southern African countries have harmonized road transit charges⁵⁵⁷to remove discriminatory practices, such as entry fees and fuel surcharges on foreign vehicles, and facilitate forward planning by transport operators.⁵⁵⁸

The landlocked developing countries and their transit neighbors in Southern Africa have also made significant progress in facilitating transit, through such measures as harmonizing axle load limits, adopting regional carrier licensing, and applying a regional third-party motor insurance scheme. Activities planned to further strengthen cooperation include the region-wide use of the COMESA/

SADC single administrative document, and implementation of the Regional Customs Guarantee Scheme (RCGS), both necessary to a harmonized customs transit system. The system is to be supported by additional transit transport

557A flat rate of US$8 per 100 kilometers on trunk road traversed.

558 See Cargo Info, Freight & Trading Weekly (September 3, 1999), http://www.

cargoinfo.co.za/ftw;see alsofor further discussion, Commission of Africa Report,supra n. 61, at 259–70.

facilitation measures, such as a “one-stop border post system,” with the aim of speeding up transit procedures and reducing delays.⁵⁵⁹

In West Africa, early steps to facilitate transit transport came from the ECOWAS Treaty in 1975, which committed member States to evolve common transport policies and formulate plans for improving and reorganizing their trans-port infrastructure. The ECOWAS Treaty was supplemented by two transtrans-port con-ventions adopted in 1982. The first, the Convention Relating to Inter-State Road Transportation, established the ECOWAS road transport network and technical standards. The second, the Convention Relating to Interstate Road Transit of Goods, sought to establish an international customs transit system. Other impor-tant regional legal instruments relate, inter alia,to a region-wide third-party motor insurance scheme, agreement on harmonization of highway legislation, temporary importation of passenger vehicles, and free movement of persons.

Unlike the African continent, where subregional legal instruments are domi-nant, transit facilitation in Central Asia is being carried out mainly through acces-sion to international conventions. The countries there have in a relatively short time succeeded in acceding to several instruments, including, inter alia: (a) the Convention on Road Traffic, 1968; (b) the Convention on Road Signs and Signals, 1968; (c) the Convention on the International Transport of Goods under Cover of TIR Carnets (TIR Convention), 1975; (d) the Customs Convention on the Tempo-rary Importation of Commercial Road Vehicles, 1956; (e) the Customs Convention on Containers, 1972; (f ) the International Convention on the Harmonization of Frontier Control of Goods, 1982; and (g) the Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road (CMR), 1956.⁵⁶⁰

In the Asian context, from an LLS perspective the Mekong Basin development plan, adopted in 2002, is noteworthy. The plan, agreed by the Mekong riparian States, calls for investments in infrastructure and technology; it is intended to bridge growth gaps among countries of the Mekong Basin as regional markets become more accessible. Tailored to basic infrastructure and skills enhance-ment in the hope of reducing physical trade barriers and exploiting shared resources, the initiative may also be conducive to improving the transport and

559Border crossing delays are at present considered to be excessive. It has been reported that the economic cost to the SADC region in terms of reduced truck productivity in 1996 was about US$50 million. For an interesting study on SADC and sharing of inter-national rivers, seegenerally Salman M. A. Salman, Shared Watercourse in the Southern Africa Development Community: Challenges and Opportunities,6 Water Pol. 25 (2003);

see also Salman M. A. Salman, Legal Regime for Use and Protection of International Watercourse in the Southern African Region: Evolution and Context,41 Nat. Res. J. 981 (2001).

560ESCAP Resolution 48/11 of April 23, 1992, recommended that members make efforts to adhere to these instruments.

river navigation network, which will be of particular help to LLS like Lao PDR.⁵⁶¹Similarly, 23 Asian countries signed a Treaty to develop a pan-Asian highway and ferry system to connect Tokyo with Istanbul,⁵⁶²under the aegis of the UN ESCAP in Shanghai. This Treaty, envisaging a 140,000-kilometer net-work of roads passing through North and South Korea, China, and Southeast, Central, and South Asia, lists roads that need to be built and upgraded and estab-lishes a unified standard for the highway. The agreement has the potential to sig-nificantly bolster trade and economic integration across the region; it should also help landlocked countries gain new routes to seaports.⁵⁶³

Clearly, the LLS in recent years have taken significant strides toward resolv-ing issues related to their handicaps. Their multipronged, multifaceted approach appears to have served them well.

561See,for detail, Oxford Analytica Brief http://www.oxweb.com, July 30, 1999, and November 27, 2002.

562On April 27, 2004; see alsoBishwambher Pyakuryal, Integration of Industrial Activi-ties of Disadvantaged Groups of Countries to the Regional and Global Levels: Prospect and Challenges in an Era of Globalization and Liberalization,report prepared for the Expert’s Group’s Meeting March 14–16, 2001 (ESCAP, Bangkok); see alsoBishwambher Pyakuryal, Trade Facilitation: Assessing Nepal’s Status inCurrent International Trade Practices, inWTO and South Asia, Post-Cancun Agenda137–151 (Navin Dahal & Bhaskar Sharma, eds., SAWTEE 2004).

563See Accord on Asian Highway Signed,DAWN (April 27, 2004). DAWN also notes that, for LLS, the highway portends a revival of the cross-continent access that the Silk Route provided early in the first millennium. See alsogenerally, Grande Question Concernant les Transports, les Communications, le Tourisme et le Développement Infrastructurel:

Intégration et Facilitation des Transports dans la Région de la CESAP. E/ESCAP/

CTCTID(4)/4 (October 29, 2002, ECOSOC).