International Organizations

IFAD launched the ‘Remittance Community Task Force’ with public and private stakeholders to come up with immediate measures to address the impact of COVID on remittances and in response to the call by the UN Secretary-General for global solidarity within the COVID-19 pandemic. This task force contributed to the discussion within the Financing for Development Process recently launched by the Prime Ministers of Canada and of Jamaica.

The Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI) is collaborating with IOM on labour mobility and human development, including employability of youth to enhance the welfare of Egyptian society and migrants.

Canada’s Economic Mobility Pathways Project (EMPP) empowers regional partners and stakeholders, including local governments and the private sector, to help immigration address regional and local labour, economic and demographic challenges and create complementary pathways for the protection of refugees and durable solutions through labour mobility, family reunification, and education.

International initiatives such as the Call to Action: “Remittances in Crisis: How to Keep Them Flowing”, launched by Switzerland and the United Kingdom in May 2020, have also contributed to leveraging remittances and other migration-related financial flows to assist local COVID-19 response and recovery interventions.

The overall objective of the project is to promote the extension of social protection for migrants in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in accordance with international social security standards, by promoting research, informing social dialogue and supporting reform efforts.

The project operates along three main axes:

The COVID-19 pandemic represented a major public health challenge and had serious economic and social impacts on origin, transit and destination countries, as well as on migrant workers and their families and on businesses and their operations. This informative note presents policy options in order to ensure comprehensive social protection for migrant workers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

This policy brief provides information and identifies a number of key recommendations to assist governments and other stakeholders in designing COVID-19 policy responses that can help to ensure the protection of migrant workers, as well as to inform responses for the protection of refugees and those displaced working in countries other than their own, differentiated by gender as appropriate and based upon relevant international labour standards, and ILO guidance and good practices.

In countries of origin, innovative ways of transnational engagement proved to be efficient to face the health crisis, In Somalia, for instance, health professionals from the diaspora have provided technical support to hospitals in their communities of origin. This new project unveiled by the IOM  in Somalia is part of a continuing effort to address this health care delivery shortage. It uses video cameras, screens, personal computers and digital mobile devices such as tablets to enhance diagnosis and treatment of patients.