In celebration of International Migrants Day 2018, OSS participated in a seminar on "Prioritizing Sustainable Development Goals in relation to migration in national development strategies", on 18 December 2018 in Tunis, under the patronage of Mr. Mohamed Trabelsi, Minister of Social Affairs of Tunisia.
This seminar was jointly organized by the National Migration Observatory (ONM) and the United Nations Migration Organization (IOM) in Tunisia, with the participation of the Ministry of Development, Investment and International Cooperation (MDICI) and the National Institute of Statistics (INS) and with the respective support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation, and the IOM Development Fund (IDF) within the framework of the projects "Integration of migration into national development strategies" and "Support to ONM", both implemented by IOM.
In his opening remarks, the Minister of Social Affairs stated that addressing migration must include the human dimension of the phenomenon by stressing that migration is a shared responsibility that cannot be addressed unilaterally. He also announced that the Tunisian national migration strategy would be presented to the Council of Ministers in early 2019, thus ensuring respect for the human rights of migrants and their families in an approach that seeks to meet their aspirations without distinction, whether they are Tunisian abroad or foreign migrants in Tunisia. The institutional system established in accordance with international charters and standards, including the National Observatory on Migration and the National Council of Tunisians Abroad, takes into account their concerns and aspirations and contributes to supporting consultation and consensus on crucial issues.
Migration is a global challenge, being linked to both the dignity of the individual and freedom of movement between countries as well as the sovereignty of States, and migrants are a source of growth and development for individuals and groups in countries of origin, transit and destination, according to Lorena LANDO, Head of Mission of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Tunisia.
Although often linked to a negative image, and according to figures and statistics, migration makes a significant contribution to meeting economic challenges where they are, stressing that Swiss cooperation projects in this field are mainly based on the protection of venerable people, according to Jenny Piaget, Counsellor at the Swiss Embassy in Tunis.
The launch of the migration-related ODD prioritization process, based on the IOM's "Practitioners' Guide: Programme 2030 and Migration", will support both:
- The ongoing preparation, under the impetus of MDICI and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of the first voluntary national report on the MDGs that Tunisia will submit in July 2019 during the 8th High Level Policy Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF)
- The development of indicators enabling government actors to measure, within the framework of existing national development strategies, the degree of achievement of the migration-related MDGs.
Convinced of the link between the environment and migration, OSS has integrated migration into the themes related to the sustainable management of natural resources that it addresses: climate change, land degradation, sustainable management of groundwater resources, etc... In this context, a regional study on population mobility and migration in West Africa, focusing on the links between migration and environmental degradation, was recently conducted by OSS, and shows that droughts drive entire segments of West African populations to desert their environments to find refuge in places with a milder climate.
Continuing to work on this theme, in 2018, OSS submitted an article entitled "Population migration and environmental degradation in West Africa", which will soon be published in the IFDD's review LEF (Liaison Energie Francophonie). To be continued.