*Policy Coherence block - Mainstreaming migration into policy planning

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were announced in 2015 and sets the international development agenda until 2030. With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, migration was formally recognized for the first time as a development topic. Integrating migration into SDG implementation is a key chance to integrate migration into development sectors over the next 15 years.

This also has two important precedents for migration governance:

Enables greater collaboration between different countries on migration

Enables greater collaboration between the migration and development sectors

What does this mean in practice?

National governments are seen as responsible for delivering and reporting on the SDGs in their countries, but local actors are also responsible for implementation. Local actors are also crucial for migration governance. Vertical coordination and coherence in migration-SDG efforts is therefore needed.

The migration-SDG linkages reach beyond implementing migration policies and entail integrating migration across sectors. Governments will need to be proactive to work horizontally across sectors to achieve their objectives. Therefore, the implementation of the SDGs requires cross-sectoral governance and coordination, and horizontal policy coherence throughout.

What are the different migration themes tackled in the SDGs?

Human trafficking and exploitation

Migration governance

Labour migration

Student mobility

Data on migration

Remittances

Which SDGs directly reference migration?

4.b Increasing student mobility

5.2 Eliminating trafficking of women and girls

5.4 Protecting migrant domestic workers

8.7 Combatting labour trafficking and forced labour

8.8 Promoting decent work and migrant labour rights

16.2 Combatting child trafficking

17.18 Increasing disaggregation of data by migration

10.7 Increasing safe, orderly and regular migration and improving migration governance.

10c. Lowering remittance costs

What about the indirect references to migration in the SDGs?

The 2o3o Agenda also contains targets that relate indirectly to migration. In these, migration is a cross-cutting theme and implementation of these should include migration.

Health

• Migrants face differentiated health risks and often have low access to healthcare
• Migrants' needs must be included in SDG health implementation; vital to inclusive progress
• The health of migrants will improve through progress in other targets, i.e. better social protection and safe and orderly migration

Education

• Roughly one in 70 children worldwide live in a country other than that of their birth, and their access to quality education can be limited. Migrant children should be included in education targets
• Education of migrants will improve through progress in other targets, including cheaper remittances, and safe and orderly migration
• Improving the education of migrants will have positive knock-on effects on other targets

Poverty & Growth

• Migrants can make significant contributions to poverty eradication and economic growth in communities of origin and destination, and migration must be integrated in planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting of the poverty targets to make the most of these
• To boost development contributions, there is a need to promote safe migration, lower its cost, take a rights based approach and focus on integration.
• All poverty data should record migratory status as a separate variable

What about the indirect references to migration in the SDGs?

The 2o3o Agenda also contains targets that relate indirectly to migration. In these, migration is a cross-cutting theme and implementation of these should include migration.

Social Protection

• Social protection coverage for migrants tends to be low - 22% of migrants have no access to official coverage, less than 1% of moving between low-income countries are entitled to any
• Migrants are often a vulnerable group; especially those with irregular status, in informal employment, migrant domestic workers, and refugees
• Migrants should be included in social protection coverage and policies

Gender

• More women are migrating independently than before and this can be empowering. At the same time, migrant women face gender-related vulnerabilities
• Gender and migration in SDG context should seek to manage how migration can contribute to women and girls' capabilities with how it can expose them to new or increased risks. This means protecting them and promoting positive opportunities of safe migration for women

Climate Change

• Migrants should be included in targets relating to disaster risk reduction, including on early warning systems
• Migration should be recognized as a climate change adaptation strategy and way to build resilience
• Education and awareness-raising efforts on climate change should include the mobility dimensions of climate change

Cities

• Migration has become and increasingly urban phenomenon: internal migrants, displaced people, and refugees move from rural to urban areas and international labour migrants move to cities
• Without effective management of urban migration, many migrants face heightened risks and vulnerabilities
• Taking a migrant-inclusive approach to implementing the SDG-urban agenda will help migrants considerably, as these focus on inclusively addressing specific needs of urban populations

In summary, it is possible to link almost every SDG target to migration. Migration can and should be integrated in as many of the targets as possible. This is the best way for migration to be mainstreamed effectively and sustainably across development sectors; the SDG framework offers us this opportunity.

Integrating migration will in turn help SDG implementation.

• Including migrant workers as a target population is important; they are a big proportion of the population and excluding them will limit progress towards targets.

• Including migrants in certain goals/targets can help progress towards others. E.g. improving 'safe and orderly migration' will improve the education of migrants, and this will have positive knock-on effects for other areas, such as economic growth, inclusion & peaceful societies.

Now that we have looked at where migration figures within the 2030 Agenda, let us turn to how to mainstream migration within the Sustainable Development Goals, by examining the SDG implementation process in focus.

Implementation: overview

1. Kick off: Decide on institutional set up and start early awareness-raising

Ensuring policy coherence

Knowledge sharing

2. Prioritization : Identify migration priorities under SDGs and choose targets to focus on

Capacity-building (including for data)

Awareness raising

3. Monitoring and Reporting: Design indicators and set up reporting mechanisms for targets

4. Implement programs or projects

4. Implement policies and/or legislation

4. Mainstreaming Migration Interventions: Choose and design type of intervention

Steps of the implementation process at a glance

1. Kick off the SDG process:

• Choosing an institutional framework to lead the process: how to relate to existing SDG implementation efforts
• Raising awareness and engaging local, regional, and national stakeholders on migration & the SDGs

2. Prioritization:

There is a wide range of SDG targets related to migration; these cannot all be tackled at the same time and not all are as relevant to each country.

This step involves selecting a number of SDG targets to address which are most relevant to the migration and development context.

4. Migration Interventions

Governments must take action towards their migration-SDG objectives. This could take any form, such as new policy frameworks, legislation, programming or projects. This step involves:

- Choosing interventions

- Mobilizing resources

- Design and planning

- Implementation and monitoring

- Capacity building

- Knowledge sharing

3. Monitoring and Reporting:

Stakeholders must capture, monitor, report, and analyze migration data on SDG targets. This step involves:

- Migration data mapping

- Developing indicators

- Reporting indicators

- Building data capacity

Migration data constraints in the context of SDGs are an immediate challenge but overall a long-term opportunity

Prioritization

Why is this step necessary?

There is a very wide range of SDG targets that are related to migration. These cannot all

be tackled at the same time and not all are as relevant to each country.

Each territory has a migration & development context that makes certain targets more

important than others to address. The aim, therefore, is to identify and prioritise

targets that relate to migration issues and objectives specific to each territory.

This exercise is crucial – it facilitates SDG progress in the migration issues that matter

most to territories.

SDG implementation is all about context – and this is where this starts.

How is it carried out?

This step can be taken through multi-stakeholder consultations. To ensure the

prioritisation exercise is successful, views of different stakeholders need to be

included.

These discussions should aim to:

• Identify and assess migration & development objectives in the context of the 2030

Agenda

• Choose a selection of SDG targets to focus on based on this

Discussions can begin either by considering first specific goals and targets from the

2030 Agenda, or by considering first the views of specific governance or

development sectors.

Guiding Principles for Prioritization

Applicability

Identifying migration topics and SDG targets that are of particular relevance to context.

Impact

Recognising where progress in a particular area holds a significant and necessary challenge for the territory, and where prioritisation would have a large impact.

Future Consideration

Taking a forward-thinking perspective to consider and address the territory’s possible migration

needs and scenarios over the next 15 years.

Constraint Recognition

Identifying and addressing any relevant constraints to topics, to realistically consider abilities to meet its migration & development goals.

Priority Linkages

Linking identified migration needs with priorities as identified by government and others, including any migration strategies of the territory, UN bodies, and others.

Monitoring and Reporting

Why do this step?

All activities relating to migration and the SDGs need to tie back to the established follow-up and review processes of the 2030 Agenda, which underpin the whole process. Whether carrying out one small-scale SDG project or a whole-of-government migration mainstreaming exercise across ministries, need to develop indicators to monitor progress towards SDG targets. To monitor SDG progress at a global level, the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG) developed a list of 232 global indicators. Despite this, governments are required to develop their own indicators.

Why?

• Not all global indicators are appropriate for local or national use.

• Some do not allow for self-reporting. e.g. “Number of countries that have implemented well managed migration policies”.

• Many of the indicators that relate to migration are relatively under-developed.

• Most crucially, indicators allow for the SDGs to become context-specific

• Tailored indicators enable governments to monitor progress towards particular migration priorities that are not reflected in global indicators

• Global indicators do not capture migration dimensions in different sectors

A strong indicator and reporting framework for the SDGs is highly valuable, as it allows governments to take the SDGs into their own hands. It can also be a management tool to help develop migration & development strategies and plans.

How to do this step?

Governments create indicators for the targets they choose. If there is no overview of what relevant data is available for a target, governments should conduct a data mapping exercise, to gather information on relevant data capture and process for that target. Useful also because often the data is there and can be optimised; making the most of admin/statistical data.

Reporting

Monitoring

Governments can choose how many indicators to create for each target depending on capacity and

resources; often each has between one and three.

Guiding principles for developing indicators:

• ✓These should reflect local or national priorities
• These should be constructed from reliable and well established data sources
• It should be possible to collect the data for the indicator on a regular basis over time
• ✓These should build as far as possible on existing data capture and processes
• These should be as consistent as possible with relevant international standards and guidance, if appropriate
• These should be straightforward to interpret, and easy to communicate
• Preference should be given to outcome, rather than process or input indicators

Local/national indicator reporting mechanisms are needed that are systematic, transparent and which minimize the reporting burden.

Local and national reporting is a way to ensure greater accountability towards the 2030 Agenda. It is key also that regular ongoing reporting takes place at the local and national because countries are only asked to report at the global level twice before 2030.

At the local/national level, governments can publish indicators separately or integrate into national reporting platforms (NRPs) where these exist.

At the regional level, indicators should be integrated into any existing SDG reporting mechanisms.

At the global level, to the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) indicators can be integrated into Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) where these are taking place.

Building migration data capacity

Policy-makers need timely, reliable, accessible, and comparable data on international

migration to manage migration effectively.

Apart from improving data for chosen indicators, governments would benefit from considering ways in which migration data can be strengthened long term.

• There is a need for improved all development data as part of SDG implementation.

Meeting requirements of follow up and review mechanisms is difficult for most countries, especially those with low statistical capabilities.

– No data exist for two thirds of the 232 official internationally-set SDG indicators

• Further, global-level indicators relating to migration are under-developed; none of the

them are Tier 1 (i.e. they do not have established methodologies).

• Hence the need for governments to take it into their own hands to generate

meaningful reporting on migration & development in the context of the 2030 Agenda.

Building migration data capacity

How?

• Supporting migration mainstreaming
• Creating local or national migration action
• plans
• Strengthening cooperation and coordination
• between NSOs and agencies that produce
• migration data
• Helping advance creation of concepts,
• methodologies and data quality assurance
• frameworks in areas that are lacking.
• Participating in international dialogue on
• migration data and development data.

What can we focus on?

• Using existing data tools better

• Optimising data processes

• Strengthening disaggregation (of migration data by other variables and of data by migratory status)

• Tapping into non-traditional data sources