The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Member States including Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda are synchronizing refugee and migration data to promote good governance and policy-making.
The new strategy that was unveiled at the 7th Regional Migration Data Technical Working Group meeting in Mombasa would enable the region to effectively handle the complex migration patterns resulting from the social, economic, and political upheavals.
Domain experts from the Regional Health and Social Development sector, IGAD Director of the Health and Social Development Department, Amb. Moussa Meigague Ali, underlined the extreme necessity of error-free, trustworthy, and harmonized migration statistics for taking rational policy decisions and encouraging regional and international collaboration.
“Migration and displacement are still the main characteristics of the IGAD region, and they have always had a strong influence on its social, economic, and political outlook,” stressed Ali.
He categorized the phenomena of internecine wars in Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan as sources of the large-scale movements of migrants, refugees, and internally displaced people (IDPs).
He noted that synchronized data is important for change these problems into potentials. Though some advancements have been realized, the region still faces several obstacles including but not limited to inadequate data, shortage of staff with necessary skills, and policy loopholes which hamper the smooth running of migration governance.
Together with its Member States, IGAD has partially solved the problem of statistical capacity through projects like the Regional Strategy for the Development of Statistics, Migration Statistics Reports, and by the creation of the Technical Working Group on Migration Data and the Sub-Working Group on Displacement Statistics.
The Deputy Director of the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), Rosemary Bowen, when talking about data on migration said Kenya would progressively improve data collection through administrative records, censuses, and surveys. “Planning and resource allocation would be impossible without this data”, said Bowen.
By embracing the collection of comprehensive and complete data and undertaking national censuses and surveys, coordination among IGAD’s Commitments members in effectively handling migration and displacement issues will be fostered, thus stabilizing, and developing the whole region further.
