News

As the coronavirus has upended life as we know it around the globe, asylum systems have not been spared. With national governments acting in different ways to stem its spread, the pandemic has resulted in a series of measures that have far-reaching consequences for asylum systems and applicants for international protection.

Due to Covid-19 lockdown, the importance of ‘key workers’ performing ‘systemically relevant’ jobs is clearer. Many of these are migrants, most of them are women. An ICMPD data survey illustrates the importance of refugees to alleviate the disruption caused by the pandemic.

Sars-CoV-2 (Covid-19) is doing to travel and migration what the 2008 financial crash did to banks and the flow of capital. Instead of a ‘credit crunch’, the world economy is crippled by a global mobility shutdown. The road back will not be easy.

In the context of increased polarisation of the migration topic among the public and policy sphere in Europe, communication on migration has gained importance: In order to reduce information gaps, build trust and gain acceptance for migration policies, innovative ways of engaging the public are needed. An initiative from Austria lends itself as a good example.

Bolstering gender sensitive approaches within Lebanese Security Agencies has been a top priority for ICMPD’s Netherlands’ Assistance Project ever since its development. Supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands in Lebanon, a fervent believer in the value of active female participation, the Project has strived to shape its whole assistance in a way that favours female inclusion and empowerment.

On the occasion of EU Anti-Trafficking Day, 18 October 2019, ICMPD’s Anti-Trafficking Programme stresses the importance of national and regional cooperation and referral to build people’s resilience to human trafficking and ensure an adequate response to trafficking cases.

Migration ranks among the most important and contested public policy issues in many countries. In this context, the policy development process is often far away from the ‘ideal scenario’ and prone to being influenced by election cycles, public opinion or crisis situations.

Following the launch of the European Union Global Diaspora Facility, Oleg Chirita, Head of Global Initiatives explores the potential of diaspora engagement for development, scrutinising the history, evidence and rationale of diaspora engagement for development and assessing how ICMPD can capitalise on its experience in diaspora engagement in this new global initiative.

Free movement of labour within the EU has led to unprecedented possibilities for EU citizens to improve their lives by moving to higher-income EU Member States. The consequences for Member States who are mostly origin countries have so far received little attention. Facing increasing challenges on their domestic labour markets, a number of EU Member States have started to develop policies in order to attract back citizens to the country.

To mark World Day against Trafficking in Persons 2019, this ICMPD Expert Voice article puts the spotlight on a neglected and under-reported form of human trafficking in the context of mixed migration: trafficking for forced migrant smuggling. 

The best way to understand the situation on migration routes to Europe is to listen to people who have made the journey. Our latest research study, “The Strength to Carry On - Resilience and Vulnerability to Trafficking and Other Abuses among People Travelling along Migration Routes to Europe”, analyses people’s resilience and vulnerabilities to human trafficking and other abuses in this context. The research found that understanding factors of resilience can help to prevent trafficking, and that resilience can be boosted or compromised by migration policies and practices. 

The continued increase in the proportion of the world's population living in urban areas has placed cities at the forefront for managing migration and its current challenges. Cities are now key actors and partners of choice for regional and inter-regional dialogues on migration, and taking their priorities into account could be beneficial to the migration dialogues in several ways.

This article presents some of the findings from our in-depth, multi-country research project “Study on Trafficking Resilience and Vulnerability en route to Europe (STRIVE)”. The analysis of the research findings is still ongoing, however first results are ready to be shared. 

When Nigerian migration is discussed in the European context – for example, at policy forums and research conferences, or in the media - a number of key issues are usually mentioned. These include: the experiences of Nigerian people transiting through Libya in order to reach Europe by sea; sex trafficking of Nigerian women by means of juju oaths; and the assumption of a widespread desire to migrate to Europe among the young and growing populations of the region. 

In 2018, the Joint EU-ICMPD “Migration EU Expertise” (MIEUX) Initiative celebrates its 10th anniversary. MIEUX, as a veritable pioneering capacity development global Initiative, has tremendously evolved since its inception, becoming a remarkable EU peer-to-peer expert facility with worldwide recognition. MIEUX’s transformation resonates with the opportunities and challenges that the EU and its partner countries share and corresponds to the shifts in migration governance, discourses, policies and institutions all over the globe. The 2017 Annual Report reflects this evolution by illustrating how the programme contributes to enhancing migration governance, furthering EU strategic priorities, and acting as a catalyst for knowledge exchange between migration experts. To mark the launch of the 2017 Annual Report, Oleg Chirita, Programme Coordinator of Global Initiatives, shares ten lessons learnt and their significance for the future of capacity building in the field of migration.