Objective 20: Promote faster, safer and cheaper transfer of remittances and foster financial inclusion of migrants

The project seeks to increase the number of remittance recipients with access to financial services and promote small and medium sized businesses. The project is focused on the extension of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) international electronic remittance service to rural postal offices and on the establishment of a link between remittances and postal account-based services. It also fosters support postal offices to develop partnerships with non-postal financial service providers such as banks and credit unions.

The African Postal Financial Services initiative is a joint regional programme launched by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the European Commission in collaboration with the World Bank, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) – a specialized United Nations agency for the postal sector, the World Savings Banks Institute/European Savings Banks Group (WSBI/ESBG) and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).

The integrated project is a tripartite Agreement signed in September 2015 between the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and Burundi Post. It seeks to utilize different components of the postal sector in Burundi to achieve lasting socio-economic development for the rural population as well as for the Burundian diaspora.

The service contributes to enhancing the capacities of the national Moldovan money transfer services providers in order to diversify the existent transfer channels and ensure their transparency and costs reduction, through establishing an efficient and sustainable international money transfers system between Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Republic of Moldova.

The Economic and Financial Learning Program is a pioneer multi-partner initiative for Filipino migrant workers and remittance-receiving family members. It is among the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP)’s efforts to promote financial inclusion by educating the public in basic financial matters. The program aims at helping Filipinos understand important economic and financial issues in order for them to develop the “skills needed to make well-informed” decisions and choices.

The DEED project aims to increase opportunities for Kosovars living abroad to participate in the economic development of Kosovo by facilitating job and enterprise creation through investment and channelling of remittances away from pure consumption, in particular by: i) increasing literacy for financial services of remittance-receiving households and increase access to finance in a gender-sensitive manner; ii) identifying and introducing models and mechanisms that facilitate migrants’ investments and savings in Kosovo; iii) offering technical support for Kosovo authorities in order to draft

IFAD’s Financing Facility for Remittances (FFR) is one of the few entities dealing directly with migrant and remittance-specific issues since its start-up in 2006. The FFR is a US$38 million multi-donor fund which promotes economic opportunities for the rural poor through the support and development of innovative, cost-effective, and easily accessible international and/or domestic remittance services. The core purpose of the FFR is to maximize the impact of remittances on development.

TawiPay (www.tawipay.com) is a pilot project that started in 2015. Its main goal is to increase transparency in the remittance channels. SECO is currently financing the establishment of the two channels Switzerland – Serbia and Switzerland – Bosnia. The project’s objective is to enable migrants/diaspora communities to reduce the cost of sending money to their home countries.

In 2010, the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States and the European Union (EU) agreed on a Joint Declaration on Migration and Development that was endorsed by the ACP-EU Council in June 2010. In this declaration, the parties committed to strengthen and deepen cooperation in the area of migration, in particular based on three pillars:

On June 19, 2014 a civil society agenda on the inclusion of migrants and migration in the post-2015 development framework was launched by the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) in partnership with civil society networks Global Coalition on Migration, NGO Committee on Migration New York, and MADE, with the endorsement of over 100 additional organizations.