Strengthening labour migration statistics for better regional migration management in East Africa

International labour migration affects most countries in the world, and international migrant workers contribute greatly to development, both in countries of origin and countries of destination. Yet, the migration process entails complex challenges in terms of fair and effective governance, migrant workers’ protection, migration and sustainable development linkages and international cooperation. Improving the knowledge base on international migration to support evidence-based policymaking will be critical to maximizing the benefits of migration for all. In the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration countries and the international community committed to strengthening statistics on international migration as the first objective to support evidence-based policymaking. In the 2030 SDG Agenda, countries further emphasized the importance of statistics on international migration to monitor progress across most Goals, and particularly through target 10.7 to Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well- managed migration policies and target 17.18 which calls for greater support to developing countries to increase the availability of “high-quality, timely and reliable data, disaggregated by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, and migratory status.” To support these global commitments, in 2018, the 20th International Conference of Labour Statistician (ICLS) endorsed the first set of international guidelines for the measurement of labour migration. These guidelines provide reference concepts, definitions, and related operational recommendations to support countries in developing their official statistics on international labour migration, while at the same time promoting cross-country comparability. In the context of the ILO Better Regional Migration Management (BRMM) project, funded by the UK Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the International Training Center of the ILO (ITCILO), in collaboration with the ILO Department of Statistics, organized a virtual workshop to raise awareness about the recent ICLS guidelines on the measurement of international labour migration and strengthen national capacities among countries in East Africa to produce statistics on international labour migration to support evidence-based policymaking. OBJECTIVES To equip national and regional stakeholders in the East African region with the necessary capacities to identify data priorities on international labour migration for policy formulation and monitoring purposes, and strengthen national sources and programmes for the production of statistics in international labour migration aligned with the 20th ICLS guidelines on the topic and good country practice. CONTENT • Relevance & priority data needs for evidence base policies in labour migration • Statistics on international labour migration: • Key international recommendations, concepts, definitions, and priority groups • Main sources of labour migration statistics, priority data, indicators and disaggregation variables • Status of labour migration statistics in countries in East Africa • The population census for statistics on international labour migration: Relevance, design considerations, core topics & questions • Household surveys for statistics on international labour migration: Relevance, design considerations, topics & questions • Measuring SDG 10.7.1 on migrant recruitment costs through surveys • Administrative sources and statistics on international labour migration: Relevance, types, contents and good practices • Assessing quality of national sources of labour migration statistics: • Survey and administrative sources • Building national and regional labour market information systems covering labour migration