Unrelenting Criss-Crosses: Pandemic-Related Restrictions and the Ghana-Togo Border

This chapter discusses the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on travel and the consequent increased stream of people across unapproved routes along the international border between Ghana and Togo, with the resulting rise in calls from traditional rulers and youth political pressure groups upon the governments on either side to reopen the official routes despite the pandemic as well as the attendant human security implications. The resulting frustration has stoked past issues surrounding this border, including irredentism on the part of these modern states invoking the pre-colonial authority and re-establishment of the original colonial states forcibly integrated or partitioned into others upon decolonisation, with local ethnic communities demanding cultural contiguity. Consequently, efforts by Ghana and Togo to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic in all its manifestations around their common international boundary have been issue-laden, with an admixture of past and contemporary concerns further presenting palpably complex outcomes. Significantly, agitations from the various communities and the governments’ responses impinge unabashedly on commitments to human security. Individuals and people have taken actions that risk their security with government reactions equally inhibiting freedom from fear, want, poverty, indignity, and threats.