GCM Development process

The Global Compact for Migration preparatory phases and recommendations relevant to data issues

Definition

The invitation to Heads of State and Governments to discuss issues related to migration and refugees at the UN General Assembly sent an important political message that migration matters. In adopting the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, the 193 UN Member States recognized the need for a comprehensive approach to human mobility and enhanced cooperation at the global level. The New York Declaration calls upon Member States to:

• protect the safety, dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of all migrants, regardless of their migratory status, and at all times;
• support countries rescuing, receiving and hosting large numbers of refugees and migrants;
• integrate migrants - addressing their needs and capacities as well as those of receiving communities - in humanitarian and development assistance frameworks and planning;
• combat xenophobia, racism and discrimination towards all migrants;
• develop, through a state-led process, non-binding principles and voluntary guidelines on the treatment of migrants in vulnerable situations; and
• strengthen global governance of migration, including by bringing IOM into the UN family and through the development of a Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.

The resulting Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) is the first, intergovernmental negotiated document, prepared under the auspices of the United Nations, to cover all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner.

The inter-governmental process for the GCM was jointly serviced by the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on International Migration (SRSG) and IOM. Although the process of developing the GCM is state-led, various stakeholders (i.e., civil society, scientific and knowledge-based institutions, parliaments, local authorities, the private sector and migrants themselves) had the opportunity to contribute their views, opinions, and expertise. The Permanent Representatives of Mexico and Switzerland to the United Nations in New York together facilitated the process.

The GCM is meant to be consistent with target 10.7 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in which Member States committed to cooperate internationally to facilitate orderly, safe and responsible migration. Its scope is defined in Annex II of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. More specifically to international migration data, the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants calls upon States to ensure that migration data are:

“Disaggregated by sex and age and include information on regular and irregular flows, the economic impacts of migration and refugee movements, human trafficking, needs of refugees, migrants and host communities and other issues.“

In the UN Secretary-General's 2016 report, "In Safety and Dignity: Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants", there is a renewed call to improve data on migration. The report is one of many that recognize the need for better international migration data. Official statistics on international migration remain very poor, and many migrants remain "invisible" because they are not registered (i.e., legal identification). All migrants, regardless of their status, could benefit from other types of identification such as civic registration (birth, marriage, death), and access cards to services (more municipalities could use these).

Some countries still do not record a person's country of birth or citizenship in their census. Moreover, internationally comparable data on migration are relatively scarce. While it is too early to say what process Member States will adopt for GCM implementation, follow up and review, a priority should be to enhance international efforts in the collection, analysis and sharing of migration data.

Data sources

Various data sources are relevant to the migration themes that informed the elaboration of a GCM. Some of the main sources were:

Data sources relevant to migrants' rights

• Socio-economic and administrative data sources such as labour force, household surveys and censuses; population registries; administrative records on numbers of detained migrants, deaths at borders, and return figures.
• International databases currently being used for human rights assessment including the United Nations Population Division's Global Migration Database, the UNHCR Statistical Online Population Database, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Database on Immigrants in OECD countries.
• Events-based data sources on human rights violations and abuses including OHCHR Universal Human Rights Index, and reports by human rights experts such as the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants.
• The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey, which was completed in 2008, interviewed 23,500 migrants and ethnic minorities across the European Union, and covers topics such as discrimination, victimization, and police stops. FRA has launched the second series of this survey.

Data sources on 'drivers of migration'

• The UNESCO and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), in partnership with Eurostat and the OECD, gathers data on the mobility of tertiary-level international students and doctorate holders. This database focuses on the numbers of international students at destination countries. The data are then compiled by the UIS, which uses them to estimate the number of students from a given country studying abroad.
• There are also data sources dealing with migration driven by environmental causes, such as the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, which publishes annual reports on people displaced by disasters on IOM's country and Displacement Matrix (DTM) data.
• IOM's DTM is a system to track and monitor the displacement and population mobility. It is designed to regularly and systematically capture, process and disseminate information to provide a better understanding of the movements and evolving needs of displaced populations, whether on site or en-route.

Contribution of migrants and diaspora

• The primary database on remittances comes from the balance of payments, estimated by central banks at the national or regional level and compiled by the International Monetary Fund.
• Another database for global remittance flows is the Migration and Remittances Database by the World Bank, which separates data by inflows and outflows globally.

International cooperation and governance of migration

• In 2015, IOM developed a Migration Governance Framework (MiGOF) to help define what "well-managed migration policy" might look like at the national level. The MiGOF was welcomed by IOM's Member States the same year.
• In 2016, IOM developed jointly with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) the Migration Governance Indicators (MGI). The MGI is a set of 90 indicators that helps governments asses the comprehensiveness of their migration governance structures, as well as to identify good practices and areas that could be further developed. The aim of the MGI is to spark an inclusive dialogue on how to address the challenges and opportunities stemming from migration. Since 2016, 49 countries have participated in the MGI process.

Irregular migration

• The most commonly available data on irregular migration are derived from national administrative sources measuring enforcement of migration legislation, not irregular migration per se. These sources may provide data on, for example, border apprehensions and refusal of entry into a country, applications for regularization or voluntary return programmes or sanctions incurred by employers of undocumented migrants.
• Some data sources which are relevant to regional irregular migration flows include Frontex, which publishes data on "irregular border crossings" in Europe; the Organization of American States (OAS), which collects and publishes data on irregular migration within the Americas; the Mixed Migration Hub (MHub), providing knowledge and research on mixed migratory movements in North Africa; migration profiles, which present a national and/or regional overview of migratory movements and trends; and the Counter-Trafficking Data Collaborative, the first global data hub on human trafficking, with data contributed by counter-trafficking organizations around the world.  

Data strengths & limitations

The availability, quality and comparability of data on international migration has been improving, although many limitations remain. At the global level, total stocks of migrants, as well as the level of remittances can be made. However, there is still very little knowledge about the flows of migrants, migrants' wellbeing , the reasons for migration, the skills of migrants, the scale of irregular migration, and the impact of migration policies and programmes as well as the impact of migration itself on countries.

It is still very difficult to estimate the number of migrants in the world in any particular year. Only one in four countries provides data on international migration flows to the UN Statistics Division. Information on national migration policies is also often lacking; a global comprehensive survey of national migration policies is yet to be completed. Furthermore, data on migrants' health and well-being are still not collected systematically across the globe, especially in developing countries.

Data bulletins

Data Bulletin: Informing a global compact for migration, launched by IOM's Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC), aims to summarize in an accurate and accessible fashion the existing evidence on migration to support the discussions and any follow-up activities of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular migration. The following bulletins have been issued to-date:

Data Bulletins: 

• Issue 1: Global Migration Trends – Nov 2017
• Issue 2: More than Numbers: the value of migration data – Nov 2017
• Issue 3: Measuring Migration Governance – Nov 2017
• Issue 4: Improving data for safe, orderly and regular migration – Jan 2018
• Issue 5: Big data and migration – March 2018
• Issue 6: Quantifying displacement and mobility – June 2018
• Issue 7: Migration Profiles - Dec 2018
• Issue 8 - Disaggregating census data by migratory status - Dec 2018
• Issue 9 - Recruitment costs - Dec 2018
• Issue 10 - Migrant children - Dec 2018
• Issue 11 - Gender dimensions of migration - Dec 2018
• Issue 12 - Migrant deaths and disappearances - Dec 2018
• Issue 13 - Irregular migration - Dec 2018
• Issue 14 - Human trafficking - Dec 2018
• Issue 15 - Access to services - Dec 2018
• Issue 16 - Public opinion on migration - Dec 2018
• Issue 17- Assisted voluntary return and reintegration - Dec 2018
• Issue 18 - Data protection - Jan. 2019

Data bulletins outline the strengths and limitations of relevant migration data, and highlight innovative data practices which are pertinent to a Global Compact for Migration. Data Bulletins reflect the collaborative nature of a Global Compact for Migration process by including relevant contributions from different parts of IOM as well as other agencies and migration experts (for more details click here).