 Hello, and welcome to our live discussion. My name is Jorge Galindo, and I am the communications officer at the IOM Global Migration Data Analysis Center here in Berlin. Today I'm joined by Frank Lasco, director of GMDAC, and Elisa Mosler-Vidal, who is GMDAC Data and Policy Officer here in Berlin as well. Welcome. And we're also joined remotely by Michel Poulin, who's one of the leading experts in migration data collection with long field experience. And today we're discussing the launch of a new report titled, How Countries Manage Migration Data? Evidence from Six Countries. And so I'm very happy to welcome our guests. And I hope that those tuning in will have questions for us. You can drop them in the comments, and we'll be happy to look into those as well. Welcome again, and I will turn now to Frank for my first question. Frank, welcome again. This study looks at the challenges and opportunities in migration-related data collection and analysis at the national level. Why did GMDAC decide to embark on this project? Thank you very much, Jorge, for the question. I think all of us working at this center ask ourselves this kind of question nearly every day. How can we improve data on international migration? It is one of the key questions facing the international community. It's the first objective of the global compact for safe, orderly, and regular migration. Countries around the world have agreed that they need to do more to improve data and evidence on migrations to inform policies and practices. So one of the reasons why we carried out this study is we wanted to investigate what are some of the challenges and also opportunities at the national level to improve data on migration. So we decided to select six countries from three different regions of the world, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. And we decided to take a different approach from previous studies. What often happens in the field of migration statistics is that agencies will send out a questionnaire to a national statistical office and they'll ask for some detailed information about the kinds of questions that are included in the census or whether or not a recent survey has been carried out, et cetera. We decided to adopt a different approach. We thought that it would be very interesting to do what many consider to be more qualitative research, in-depth research, with not only the national statistical offices in these six private countries, but also with a range of different stakeholders. And that was a deliberate decision because migration data, migration statistics are not owned solely by those who work in national statistical offices. They're not solely created or collected for the purpose of informing people who work for national statistical offices. Those offices are often there to serve the wider public, ministry, civil society to promote a better understanding of migration and mobility in those countries. And so what we did in each of these countries is we identified people to interview not only in the national statistical offices, but also in key ministries dealing with migration. And across the board, we ask questions about how the data is being collected, what are the main gaps and challenges that national authorities see in this area, and what are some of the examples of innovative practice? And we're going to be hearing in a moment or two about some of the interesting ideas and lessons learned from this study. Thank you very much. Yeah, as you mentioned, I think a big question then is about the practical implications. And I would like to hear from Elisla Mosler-Vidal also. If you can tell us what happens with this study, what are the practical implications for stakeholders working in migration data from this report? Thank you very much, Jorge. So the report has, I believe, 17 sort of more practical recommendations. I'm not going to talk about all of them here, but I'll maybe comment on two sort of wider implications of the report, I believe, for practitioners in migration data. And the first is really that I think the study makes a case for there to be greater exchange and more dialogue between the national and global levels when it comes to migration data. So there has been a greater focus on migration data in recent years. We have the first objective, as Frank mentioned, of the GCM focusing on migration data. We have more energy sort of into calling different countries to improve the migration evidence base nationally, as well as at global level. And there's also an interesting development happening now, which is the revision of the 1998 recommendations on migration statistics. So at global level, there's a lot more focus on the topic. And this report, I think, has interesting applications for how this global level dialogue is really linked to national data practices really on the ground. So the report interestingly looked also at how far some of the UN-recommended core questions on migration are included in various data collection tools in each country, including censuses and various household surveys. It found, for example, that country of birth was included in all the censuses and all the countries. However, country of citizenship was not always included, which is also a UN-recommended variable to include. So I think when we think about how these kinds of recommendations are developed at global level and how they're also rolled out, it's important to remember to engage the national perspective throughout to really build off real migration data realities and experiences at national level to really look at which recommendations, which specific guidance points are more realistic at national level, which ones are perhaps more challenging for countries to implement in practice. And really, where do we go with that? A kind of related point also is that the study also looked at the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and also the global compact and how far this has impacted migration data in each country. And interestingly, it sort of suggested that the impact of these very important global processes that do mention migration data, their impact has been potentially limited at national level. It's not really clear that this has had a concrete impact in improving data on migration and development on safe and orderly migration, which was really the key hope when some of these frameworks were adopted. So I think this also sort of points to a similar point that for that to be real progress on the ground when it comes to migration data nationally, more work is needed to sort of connect the dots between the global and the national level. One kind of final implication that I sort of find interesting in the report as well is that I think it makes also a clear case for more peer-to-peer knowledge sharing between countries. So a lot of the challenges that came up in the report among the six very, very different countries were really similar. And I think this is interesting because we see a lot of, for example, data fragmentation, coordination issues when it comes to migration data, and these look really similar even though the context varied a lot. So I think that kind of suggests that could be more space really created for countries to gather together, discuss practical lessons learned, potential solutions and sort of discuss with each other ways forward. Thank you. Thank you so much, Elisa. And I might go a little bit of script here because now you touched on the important issue of providing a platform for knowledge exchange between countries and various stakeholders. And we've heard of this initiative within the Migration Network Hub that perhaps, Frank, you can just raise awareness of. There is now a repository of practices that's part of the Migration Network Hub which is under the UN Migration Network. Can you tell us a little bit about the objectives of having such a platform and how people can contribute with practices and again, the importance of sharing knowledge on this issue? Yes, just very briefly, the repository of the UN Migration Network Hub has been created and was launched only last year in order to enable everyone who is following and interested in learning more about the implementation of the Global Compact on Migration in giving them a space to share some of their innovative practices. And it goes beyond data, but there are, of course, a number of examples of data projects and initiatives included in the hub. And what is particularly interesting is that there is what's called a peer review process. So more than 100 experts working in the field of migration review the content of the hub and proposals for uploading different types of examples of initiatives on a regular basis before these initiatives are then shared with the wider international community. So that's one distinctive feature of it. If I could continue and mention a few more findings from the study, which I think are of particular importance in relation to the Global Compact on Migration and the way forward, because in May of this year in New York, states will come together at something called the International Migration Review Forum, where they will look back over the last four years. Four years ago in Marrakesh, the Global Compact on Migration was adopted. And this meeting in May will provide an opportunity to take stock of how much progress has been made in implementing the Global Compact, including the first objective of the Compact, which is in fact a cross-cutting objective that relates to all 23 objectives of the GCM because it's hard to achieve progress on those objectives without having good and reliable and timely data. That meeting will I think be a useful place to consider some of the results and lessons from this study because this is a rare example of an in-depth qualitative piece of research in this area. And the meeting in New York will not only look backwards, it will also look forwards and it will highlight some of the priorities for the future when it comes to thinking about ways in which we can work together to implement the Global Compact on Migration. So one of the key questions which will be raised is how do we implement a GCM objective one? What can countries do to improve the collection and analysis and use of and sharing of data on migration? And I think there are some interesting lessons from this new study in that respect. The first one is that all six of the countries, even though they are working in very, very different migration contexts, Djibouti and Nigeria are very different from Canada and Ireland. But all of these countries are taking the question of improving data on migration. Very seriously, we were able to document a number of new initiatives. Perhaps those initiatives are not so well known beyond the national context. So I think there's a lot of information that could be shared there more widely and countries can learn from each other. But despite the fact that there is a lot of activity, we still find that because migration itself is a cross-cutting issue. Migration is, many different ministries are interested in migration issues, whether they be interested in labor migration, health issues, the environment, development, et cetera. So data, when it comes to collecting data on migration, it often is scattered between different ministries and different actors and even between government and civil society in the private sector. So one of the key things that we found in this study is that countries, although some of them have set up into ministerial working groups, there's still much more that they need to do to articulate and develop a national migration data strategy or national migration data plan. So I think that would be one of the key recommendations coming out of this report, which is every country is interested in migration data and in improving data on migration, but then they have not really fully articulated how they want to reach that goal. What are the specific objectives that they want to achieve in this area? Do they have any kind of a roadmap? And that was something which we found, I think, consistently across the six countries, although, as I say, there are some many interesting initiatives relating to various subtopics. Thank you. Thank you so much, Frank. We have also with us today Michel Poulin, who's unfortunately not able to join us here in Berlin today. He's joining us remotely. Welcome to you, Michel. We were talking about the importance of different stakeholders within those countries working on migration-related data to communicate with each other and to ensure collaboration on this issue, the importance of having national migration data strategies in place. I would like to hear from you what good practices have been observed to ensure effective collaboration across various government agencies and sectors. Over to you, Michel. Thank you for your question. And in fact, what I understood when discussing with a lot of stakeholders in the six countries under study is that the bigger difficulty is to convince the most important authority in the country that data on migration are needed to support migration policy. In a lot of case, they are not convinced that these data are needed. And the main problem of collecting this data is probably at national level. There is a lot of effort at global level to push country to produce these data. But the main problem is at national level because very often the statistical offices does not have the possibility to develop these data because they don't have support. So any initiative in country that push really the statistical office that give the possibility to statistical office to do a new data collection or to improve the situation will be very important. Country has really to understand that these data should be really needed to policy support, which means that the data should be reliable and come on time. It cannot be just to take an example if you have a census and you receive the result of the census five years later, it's historical data. It's not anymore useful to develop the policy. So there is a full strategy that should be developed within the country to prove that collecting data is very important. It should be reliable timely data and an whole effort should go in this direction. And they are definitely some initiative that are taken in several of the six countries. For sure they are, for example, state committee on migration data collection which means intergovernmental cooperation varying from country to country. But in some country, this is very active and there is a section of working group working on data, especially on data, not only sharing information on international migration but also trying to see together how to collect the best data and the most appropriate data for the topic that are really high in the agenda of the migration policy. So this is one aspect that is really important. Then you have a lot of initiatives that has been taken. I have, for example, an initiative in Moldova where they did a big work on border control trying to use the border data and to see how can we with the border data have some indication of migration flow because you should remember that you have flow and stock in migration and stock may be easily captured by a survey or census why flow are really more difficult to capture. So the best place where you may identify a migrant is at border crossing but you need a special methodology, you need a special cooperation between border guard, ministry of interior, statistical office and so on. So there come the point of coordination and cooperation. And cooperation is a big obstacle. This is sensitivity of the data. Some ministry does not want to share their data. For two reasons, they say that it's mostly because of sensitivity but it's maybe also just because there is some problem in the data, double count, missing value and so on. So a close cooperation between the statistical information institution and the ministry in charge of border control or the ministry in charge of population registration will really help the situation. It's a mutual comprehension, mutual support. And sometimes I suggest and I've seen this in some country is that somebody, a statistician from statistical institution will go and work on the permanent base in the ministry in charge of border control in charge of population registration and bring there the knowledge of statistician. But at the opposite, it will be good also that somebody from the ministry go and work in the statistical office to see what is the other orientation. You see, there is a lot of improvement that are needed and we saw some sign in this direction in all the country. Thank you so much, Michel. Very important insight as well on this issue. Just as a closer, I would like to ask our guests and again, thank you so much for joining us. This is our very first live discussion coming from GMDAC. Hope you enjoyed it. I'll just turn to Frank first for some last comments on the study. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jorge. I would like to underline two key points. One is that the UN system has been talking in recent years about the need for a global migration data capacity building program to help UN member states improve their data on migration. And this is mentioned specifically in the global compact on migration under objective one. I think the results from this study can feed into or provide ideas for that program. I think what this study does is it gives us a snapshot of the capacities that exist in many of these countries and the challenges that they face both in terms of lack of resources but also sometimes lack of training and staff in a very fast moving environment. But also it's not just about improving the capacity to produce data. We also found that there's a need to improve the capacity to analyze and use data and to make sure it's shared in an effective manner with a whole range of different users. So I think they're important lessons from this new international in depth study which could be taken on board in any new UN global migration data capacity building program. The second point I want to make is that I think the approach that we took and the methodology of the study could be of interest to other countries. This is only a first pilot study focusing on six countries but the study could be potentially replicated in many other countries around the world and it could be or provide a useful tool for countries that want to conduct some kind of a national migration data assessment or on a periodic basis. So we'd be happy to work with any interested countries in advising them on how they could adopt a similar approach and learn lessons from the research that we carried out for this report. So thank you. Thank you so much Frank and a call to action for interested countries that would like also to be part of a future exercise. As you mentioned this is the first and in terms of the approach for the study. I will turn now to Elisa for some last words over to you. Thank you very much. I think those of us who work in the migration data space whether we're in international organizations or national statistical offices or other sectors I think we're very used to saying that the migration evidence base is poor and that it's patchy and that it really needs to change. I think now we know globally that this is a fact that there is a real and urgent need to simply generate more information on migration and also to crucially use it for policy and programming. What I think makes this study quite special and quite different is the fact that because we spoke to six different countries who again are very, very different on how sort of the realities on the ground are in terms of migration data. We kind of gave a bit of a voice or allowed some of these topics to really come alive at national level. So I think rather than just sort of complaining about how bad the evidence base is that we all do very, very often because it is very patchy. I think this kind of study gives us a few really concrete examples to build on in different countries, different practices that we see replicated in two or three very different countries in different regions. At the global level, for example, we talk a lot about improving the use of administrative data towards migration statistics. And in this study, we saw two or three countries who are concretely already doing this in very different ways, sort of leveraging different databases from administrative sources towards their migration statistics at national level. Migration data integration is another sort of topic where that is talked about a lot at global level. The need to integrate different types of migration data from different sources to sort of generate a richer picture of the migration reality in a specific country. Again, in this study, we also saw some very concrete examples of this happening, but also in different ways in different countries. So I think a lot of really interesting practices and topics came up in this study that are really are relevant to the global level because they really provide real-life examples of what these may look like. Thank you. And if I may add to the last point. Of course. I think today and this film and this discussion also enables us to give a voice to the people who participated in the study. And what typically happens in these sorts of studies is that we hear from experts and not the people on the ground that are dealing with these issues on a day-to-day basis. And I think one of the strengths of this report is that it does give a voice to people working in different national statistical offices and other parts of government in these countries working with migration data and statistics. It gives them an opportunity and a voice to express their views and opinions. And through I think today's discussion, hopefully we're beginning to raise more awareness about some of the both challenges but also opportunities in this area. I think that the main challenges in migration data collection is that the traditional tools are not the most useful. Census will never bring you a lot of information on migration and survey. Yes, there exists some module, migration module that you may include in the survey but to get really a strong information you need to have the same survey every year and to go on with these so that you can identify trends in all phenomenon related to migration. I think that in the field of international migration data collection we are obliged to look at administrative source and we are obliged to try to see how to use them to provide appropriate data. And that's a very, very big challenge, challenge of coordination, a challenge of cooperation, a challenge in all the directions but also a challenge because we need methodology. Just to consider the border control it's not only to say how many enter, how many exit, these are not all migrants. You have to develop a methodology that allow you to identify who is migrant within those who cross the border. And I would like to mention also a big difference between the six countries that we study. Three of them are immigration country and three of them were immigration country. And it's clear that our recommendation should not forget these immigration country and the big problem there is to collect data on migrant, on out migrant, those who are living abroad. This is the diaspora. This is those who leave the country and also those return to the country in a lot of country, the returning migrant may have a huge impact on the development in their village in the local society. So collecting information on returning migrant may be important. So I would like really that in the forcoming revision of the UN recommendation there will be a large part showing how to use the administrative source and giving also a very important role on the data collection on immigration because more than half of the country around the world are more are really immigrating country out migration is very important. Just to take the example of India we are also working on India and we have seen that in India you have so many immigrant from India and India is not able to provide any statistics on these and it concerns more than 1 billion people around the world, one of the six of the planet. So we are really to take care that the new revised recommendation will not forget this aspect of migration. Indeed, lots to unpack but I guess again, for those who are interested in the report today this study has been launched. It's available on our website www.gmdac.im.int Thank you so much also to you, Michelle for joining us remotely. We'll wrap up for today. Thank you so much and have a good day. Thank you. Thank you.