Experts from national statistical offices of ECOWAS member States agreed to strengthen migration data management for evidence-based policy making on labour migration.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) shared expertise and knowledge in labour migration statistics by contributing to improve the evidence base for programmes and policies that facilitate labour mobility for development within the ECOWAS region.

From 15-18 March 2016 in Lome, Togo, senior statisticians and migration data management experts from ECOWAS Member States and international organisations, took part in a workshop, planned in collaboration with the ILO, to discuss best practices and latest trends in migration data collection and analysis.

“The ILO supports the collection, compilation and sharing of statistics on labour migration and provides technical assistance tailored to national statistical offices to create or extend their investigations into workforce related matters by collecting reliable statistics based on international standards and common methodologies,” ILO’s Senior Statistician Honore Djerma explained.

Strengthening national migration data management systems and improving the coordination between national stakeholders has been a common challenge in the sub region. Currently, there is a lack of comprehensive, reliable and accurate data on migration and labour market in the sub region which is also facing serious obstacles in the implementation of ECOWAS protocols.

The Lome workshop was an opportunity for ILO to share the Recommendation 19 on migration statistics, databases on labour migration statistics in ASEAN, Arab States and African countries as well as data collection tools.

A representative from the African Union Commission presented the data component of the joint labour migration programme (JLMP), an AU/ILO/IOM/ECA initiative, adopted by the African Heads of State and Government in January 2015 on establishing coherent, accurate, and up-to-date data and statistics on migration in Africa.

Participants included ECOWAS Commission, ILO, IOM, AU, UN DESA, UN ECA, ICMPD and senior experts of national statistics institutions of ECOWAS Member States and Mauritania.

Effective labour migration and policies

Ensuring the effectiveness of labour market policies including labour migration issues is a complex task which requires having reliable qualitative and quantitative data. The statistics on labour migration are not only useful to inform policy debates at national, regional and international, but also to formulate, implement and evaluate policies on labour migration that address real effects of migration on the labour markets and developing countries, Djerma emphasized.

According to the ILO, national statistics – comprehensive, comparable, official and reliable estimates – at regional and global level of the economically active immigrant population are still largely lacking and short-term migration are difficult to understand.

Access to the main data disaggregated by age and sex, data on the needs of the labour market, professions and skills, working conditions and wages, and social protection of migrants, is very scarce, ILO’s specialist stressed.

This is also valid at the ECOWAS level which is a high mobility area. However despite the fact that flows of labour migration in West Africa are mainly intra-regional, more attention on migration data issues is essential to the sub region, Honore Djerma concluded.

In the area of data collection and management, the Support to Free Movement of Persons and Migration in West Africa (FMM West Africa) Project seeks to support the development of standardized procedures to collect and process migration-relevant data as well as the analysis and dissemination of such data.

Background information

Support to Free Movement of Persons and Migration in West Africa (FMM West Africa) aims to maximise the development potential of free movement of persons and migration in West Africa by supporting the effective implementation of the ECOWAS Free Movement of Persons' Protocols and the ECOWAS Common Approach on Migration.

FMM West Africa is co-funded by the EU and the ECOWAS Commission, and with a budget of over 26 million Euros, provides technical assistance and capacity-building support to the ECOWAS Commission, the fifteen ECOWAS Member States and Mauritania.

Migration data management, border management, labour migration and counter-trafficking are the key areas covered by the project.

All activities are steered by the ECOWAS Commission and implemented by an IOM-led consortium that includes ICMPD and the ILO. The Project Support Unit, which implements the project, is based in Abuja, Nigeria. The project commenced on 1 June 2013 and will run up to 2018.