PERSPECTIVE| FES Eastern AFRICA Boundaries with Issues Soft Border Management as a Solution? Annette Weber January 2012 n Borders, boundaries, and borderlands constitute multiple possibilities as well as ob­stacles. Whereas borders are important to demarcate the physical boundaries of state territories, they are in daily practice even more important to the people living along the borders. n Border issues such as oil, migration, pastoralists, citizenship, trade, and nationality must be negotiated and administered. Mutually tended borders – demarcated or not – might bring a variety of positive effects. n Border populations as a source of knowledge and trade potential and transnational citizenship should be assets from a regional as well as national perspective. n In the Horn of Africa, all the cases for complex and paradoxical issues of borderlands can be found. However much a central government insists on securing the border, the idea(l) of a hard border regime(wall, fence, or Berlin or Korean-type division) is not feasible. It is an illusion to believe that Sudan or South Sudan or any other country in the Horn of Africa would have the capacity to fully secure and monitor its borders. n While the great majority of borders in Africa are porous and constitute no real ob­stacle to the borderland communities, the borders in the Horn of Africa region have quite symbolic meanings that are contested and fought over.