Governance of Transport Corridors in OIC Member States:
Challenges, Cases and Policy Lessons
95
7 Results Case Studies: Asia Group
This section presents the three selected case studies of the Asia group, including the UN-ESCAP –
Central Corridor (Section 7.1), the ASEAN maritime corridor (Section 7.2), and the TRACECA corridor
(Section 7.3).
7.1 Case Study UN-ESCAP – Central Corridor
7.1.1 Introduction
The Eurasian Central Corridor has only recently been established as one of the three Eurasian
Transport Corridors being developed under initiative of the United Nations Economic and Social
Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), i,e, Northern, Central and Southern Corridor. The
Central Corridor stretches from Western China through Kazakhstan and branches out to Moscow in
Russia and Istanbul in Turkey, se As the corridor is still relatively new, the member states
are still in the knowledge exchange phase and no MoU is in force yet.
UNESCAP itself is an UN institution responsible for the regional development of the ASIA-Pacific
Region. It has 53 members and nine associate members, encompassing a region from Russia to New
Zealand and from Turkey to Japan. Its major tasks are conducting studies, developing projects, and
providing technical assistance and capacity building to its members in all fields relevant to society. Of
its nine committees, the Transport Committee deals specifically with transport infrastructure and
policy related issues. The Eurasian Corridors are the result of a series of strategic documents published
by UNESCAP, including:
 Regional Intergovernmental Agreement on the Asian Highway Network (2004);
 Intergovernmental Agreement on the Trans-Asian Railway Network (2006);
 Intergovernmental Agreement on Dry Ports (2013);
 Regional Strategic Framework on the Facilitation of International Road Transport (2012);
 Regional Cooperation Framework for the Facilitation of International Railway Transport (2015).
Together, these documents are the groundwork for the development of transport in the region in terms
of the technical standards for transport infrastructure and facilities, priority investments, network
interoperability and identification of transport routes. Recently, UNESCAP published the
Comprehensive planning of Eurasian Transport corridors study report (2017), the first strategic
document specifically dedicated to the three corridors. In this report, an inventory is made on the
existing infrastructure routes and their status, as well as providing an overview of other transport
agreements in place in the region. This section is based on these documents. Further information was
acquired from a field visit to Kazakhstan between the 22nd and 24th of January.