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By 1 July, free movement should once again be a reality within the EU’s passport-free zone, more or less. The Union is re-opening the single market just in time to secure this year’s agricultural production and the tourist season. The big question now is whether and how to re-open to the rest of the world.

The country has a promising new government under Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi but faces a range of challenges connected to its large refugee and irregular migrant population.

One of the more sinister aspects of the global pandemic is the spread of deliberately misleading information online. ICMPD’s Regional Office for the Mediterranean considers how disinformation networks work to falsely portray migrants as vectors for the disease.

Governments are considering ‘immunity passports’ to allow those with COVID-19 antibodies greater mobility and to provide employers with an increasing pool of people to fill public-facing jobs. This may seem tempting but would lead to mass discrimination in the labour market, and also provide perverse incentives to potential migrants to become infected. There are alternatives.

Governments are seeking the balance between containing the COVID-19 pandemic and saving the economy. Migrant workers are essential in this regard, and the EU and its member states have to find ways to manage labour migration in an era of restricted mobility.

Millions of people are stranded abroad by COVID-19. The pandemic has triggered the largest repatriation operation in history. As a result, consular services are under tremendous pressure and are forced to work together.

The pandemic is teaching border agencies in Europe important lessons about operational preparedness in times of crisis. This has implications for the future in terms of training, staffing, cross-border information sharing and the use of technologies.

ICMPD field operatives track the ramifications of Covid-19 for migration in more than 90 countries. Over the past weeks, they have reported on developments in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan. Here are some of the most important.

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.