 As Director of Department of the International Corporation and Partnership in IOM, it's my great pleasure to welcome you to this webinar on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and labor migration, organized by IOM Division with the support of Gender Equality Branch of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Understanding how gender shapes every stage of the migration experience and how migrants of different genders can be better supported, protected, and are key to IOM's work in the world, generates indeed mainstream in all IOM activities to ensure that the specific needs and capacities of all IOM beneficiaries are addressed. Male migrants represented 40% 72 million international migrants worldwide in 2019. They did not only migrate as part of family households but also have also increasingly and taken migration independently. Many of these women are migrant workers. According to the International Labor Organization, women accounted for 1.6% of all migrant workers in 2017. It was further estimated that women migrants have contributed more than $2 trillion US dollars to global productivity. For women and girls, migration may represent new opportunities and the means of empowerment. Migration can entail increased autonomy, human rights and greater access support, gender equality, gender-based violence, exploitation, abuse, and trafficking, particularly when women migrants are undocumented. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the precarious situation in which some women migrant workers were while creating as well new risks, vulnerabilities, and inequalities. Despite the lower mortality rate in females and males, the pandemic seriously impacted women migrant workers who are often overrepresented in precarious employment and informal sectors. Women migrant workers have also been experiencing obstructive access to healthcare and increased caregiving burden with children out of school, as well as heightened risk of gender-based violence and exploitation. But somehow, paradoxically, women migrant workers have also proven to constitute the essence of cursey in today's economies. There have been frontline workers during the pandemic, be it as domestic workers or by working in the current health sectors, but implications of the pandemic thus be made out in a close and gender-based approach to fully address the inequalities, vulnerabilities created and exacerbated by the pandemic, and which do pay tribute to the agency exercised by all in time adversity, including women migrants, respect is essential to more comprehensively understand the short and longer-term impacts of the pandemic on women migrant workers, so as to be able to adopt a gender-sensitive responses to COVID-19 and to accordingly develop adaptive migration policies. The research papers on which today's presentations will be based constitute one step forward in this direction, as they offer some explorative thoughts grounded on rigorous, balanced, evidence-based research. ILM has been a statement of production and publishing of academic evidence on maximum effective responses. ILM publishes in its own right well over 100 publications, migration every year through our online bookstores, including those emanating from research projects and undertaking various locations throughout the world. In doing so, we work with migration researchers from all around the world and are pleased to collaborate and partner with them in a variety of contexts, whether that relates to policy research dialogues, research project partnerships, acting as observers to academic research projects or provide a platform for the latest evidence which analysis on complex and work. And we look forward to these to our panelists and partners to work with you for interesting ambassadorial... Thank you very much, Wendley and to the ILM for this opportunity to join you today. I take this opportunity initially to introduce myself. I am Australia's Ambassador for Gender Equality and have taken up this role only in March this year, which of course has coincided with, you know, the thinking about today, which is of course COVID-19 and looking at particularly the sort of gendered impacts of it. And today's topic, of course, being about labour migration of women and girls in the Asia Pacific. I know and understand of course that the conversation today will focus largely on the two reports that I think Misley has just mentioned. Of course in 2019, DFAT was pleased to collaborate with the ILM to produce a research report entitled Supporting Brighter Futures, Young Women and Girls and Labor Migration in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. That report was published last year and in fact my predecessor, Ambassador Dr. Shaman Stone, I think contributed to the forward of that particular piece of research. Of course, it's sought to shine a light on different experiences of women and girls in negotiating challenging processes of migrating internationally for work. Prior to COVID-19, labour migration of women and girls in our region of course was an increasing phenomenon and I think you've just heard when, you know, outlined some of the figures globally on that. Yet still this phenomenon is not well understood. In 2019, the IMA report aimed to help fill in knowledge gaps and offer solutions for policymakers, practitioners and researchers. Bright provided, I think as when mentioned, available evidence on issues affecting migration of women and girls. Those issues are things such as education, intergenerational migration, women migrants as providers in their households, the impacts on those left behind. Of course, often children and of course, migration and trafficking issues. This report was published in 2019. Of course, the world has changed immeasurably as a result of COVID-19 and we're seeing labour markets and the world of work upended for millions of people around the world. Migrating overseas for work and returning home has been dramatically impacted upon, of course, by restrictions in movement under lockdowns and border closures. Many places of work and whole sectors of employment have been severely curtailed or shut down completely. And of those frontline workplaces still delivering essential services during a pandemic, of course, looking at, you know, sectors such as the health and social care, cleaning, agriculture and food production. We find that in many countries, migrant women are highly represented in these sectors and I think this is something that Nicola, who's presenting today in Laura's paper, sort of touches upon. So of course, what are the longer term implications for migrant workers? I think the 2019 Supporting Brighter Futures paper highlighted the underlying and significant challenges faced by young women and girls migrating for work. And of course, COVID-19 has thrown an already complex situation into further and rapidly shifting ground for them. But it is clear that the impacts of COVID-19 on women and girls and particularly women migrants is enormous. It of course has economic, social, cultural and gender equality implications that affects lives and decisions of individuals and families and affect government policy and will affect government policy I think for years to come. Of course, we shouldn't just focus on women in terms of their vulnerabilities as migrant workers. We know too, and I think the figure that when just provided in terms of women's contribution to GDP highlights this, we know that women make a huge contribution to the well-being and prosperity of their families and communities back home but also in their countries and employment. This value has become very obvious to us now in Australia as we come to fully appreciate the critical roles of service providers such as healthcare workers and agricultural workers during this pandemic. Of course, no one knows where this situation, how long the situation will continue or how economies that seek to reopen and facilitate the movement of people, how quickly that will happen. But from Australia's perspective, Australia's COVID-19 partnerships for recovery strategy, which is our development-focused strategy, notes the important role that migrant workers will play in economies such as Australia's into the future. Government and other stakeholders will need to work together to reshape schemes, of course, such as the Pacific Labor Scheme and the Seasonal Workers Program, so that they can contribute to the economic recovery and longer-term resilience of economies in the region. And so that migrant workers, both men and women, have safe and worthwhile opportunities available to them into the future to support themselves and their communities, of course, towards sustainable and inclusive post-COVID economic recovery. It is in this uncertain and evolving context that DFAT certainly has been very glad to support IMO to commission the production of these two papers and to look in more detail at the impact of COVID-19 on labour migration of women and girls in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. So today, I'm very pleased to recommend these two papers to you in terms of a sort of a virtual launch, if you like, of COVID-19 women migrant workers, these are the impacts and implications by Laura Foley and Nicola Piper, I have a copy here, but here. And of course, also COVID-19, the earlier study on which was done by Marika Adams, these are undoubtedly useful reading for those looking for evidence-based research and analysis on these topics. And of course, we're very fortunate to have some of the authors here today to speak about these particular topics. I'll now hand over to Dr. Marie McAuliffe to introduce them and our other distinguished panellists. And I look forward to hearing both the presentations and discussions from this very worthwhile webinar today. Thank you. Excellent, thank you very much indeed, Ambassador. And it's been a real delight to be able to work with DFAT, to work with you and your team in the last couple of years now to be able to bring together the latest evidence, research and analysis on the very strategic topic of young women and adolescent girls and migrating for labor reasons throughout the Asia and Pacific region. So we're really delighted that you could join us today and please pass on our thanks to your team. It has been a very fruitful and very productive project for the last couple of years. It is my great delight and honour to be able to moderate really the Q&A and the presentation of the papers. As the Ambassador mentioned and also when mentioned earlier, this actual project does have a long sort of gestation period and it really was not focusing on COVID-19 initially. We worked together with DFAT and the Gender Equality Branch to produce a paper that was released last year. It was actually a report of a series of papers, critical issues facing young women and adolescent girls as they engaged in labor migration throughout the Asia and Pacific region. But of course, with the beginning of the year and in fact a disruption to the official launch of that particular report, we went back to DFAT and said, we think that it's worthwhile even in the early stages of the pandemic to really start to look at the existing long-term trends in regards to the labor migration of young women and adolescent girls and also to be able to look at what the implications and the impacts are starting to manifest and how that is going to look in the years, months and years to come. So it is my great delight to be able to introduce our three panellists. We have three very distinguished, excellent researchers who contributed to the project in various ways. What we would like to do is I'll introduce all three. We will have their presentations of their particular pieces of work and I will mention that Nicola Piper is presenting her paper on behalf of Laura Foley as well, her co-author. Marika has done a great sort of update to the supporting brighter futures to really looking at the COVID-19 impacts right the way across the spectrum for Asia and Pacific. And Lan Anghuang has also really contributed to the initial report, but then takes us through what that actually means in terms of COVID-19 and the existing evidence base. So please allow me first to introduce our presenters. We will have their presentations. Please feel free to add questions or comments in the chat function. They will be going through to the host of the webinar. Someone in my team, Josiane, will be taking your questions and she can feed them through for the Q and A for us a bit later on. So without further ado, let me please introduce Professor Nicola Piper first. Nicola is Professor of International Migration at the University of Sydney, which is also the founding director of the Sydney Asia Pacific Migration Center. Her research interests revolve around international labour migration and the governance of labour mobility and gender. She's co-chief editor of the International Peer Reviewed Global Journal, Global Social Policy and guest editor of two book series on migration focused on the Asia Pacific with Routledge. In 2018, she was awarded a Global Professor Fellowship by the British Academy hosted by Queen Mary University of London in the UK, where she'll be conducting research until December, 2022. So good morning, Nicola. I know you're joining us from the UK. It's one of the wonderful things about doing these webinars. We can have people from all over the world online. Marika McAdam is an independent consultant and researcher and advisor on human trafficking, migrant smuggling and related issues. She's worked in the International Organization for Migration, the UNODC, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Chatham House and the Nexus Institute amongst others. She's currently serving as the International Law and Policy Advisor for the Regional Support Office of the Bali process. She's addressed barristers, senators, parliamentarians served on delegations to intergovernmental processes and facilitated UN expert working group meetings. She's carried out qualitative research globally, including in the context of multi-country and multi-year studies on the challenges of implementing international law in domestic practice. Marika has published widely on criminal justice and human rights issues and is the author of several key United Nations technical publications. She has a PhD in international human rights law. And if I'm not mistaken, Marika, I saw that you've also got a new book out. Did I see that come through my seats this morning? Congratulations on that as well. Lan An Quang is joining us from Melbourne. Good afternoon. So good afternoon, Lan. Lan is a senior lecturer in development studies in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She received her MA and PhD degrees in development studies from the School of International Development at the University of East Anglia in the UK and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Asian Metta Centre for Population and Sustainable Development Analysis in Singapore before joining the University of Melbourne in January 2011. She was a senior visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and her research on Vietnamese migrants, gender, sexualities and family has been published in various prestigious journals. Lan regularly serves as external examiner for research high degrees and reviewer for various journals, publishers and funding agencies. And we're very pleased that you could join us too. Lan, and take us through your paper that was in Supporting Brighter Futures Report and then look at the implications in terms of COVID. So without further ado, after those very intimidating bios, I must add, I will hand over first to Nicola to let her take us through really the global picture in regards to COVID-19 and the impacts and implications for women migrant workers. Over to you, Nicola. Can you hear me? Am I unmuted? Yes, thank you very much. I am research division team for inviting me. I'm not only here today to be able to share the findings from this research project, but also to give me the opportunity to get involved in the first place, which is always a great pleasure. And as was already said, the observation I'm sharing here with you today are based on a paper I did with Dr. Laura Foley, who's postdoctoral fellow at Queen Mary University and works with me on the British Academy project. And we did this paper a couple of months ago and in this paper, we analyzed how the COVID-19 pandemic both amplifies already existing gender dynamics and creates new gender-based outcomes which disproportionately impact upon women migrant workers around the world. And we did this by examining the essential services which migrant women provide, in particular in health, social and domestic care, and compared this with the ways in which migrant women often remain themselves excluded from accessing key services and support mechanisms for their own needs. So as we all know, COVID-19 has dramatically changed labor market and workplace dynamics and has had detrimental effects on the lives of millions of workers worldwide, but pandemics as most things in life and their fallout are not gender neutral and women migrant workers are being severely affected on the basis of their gender labor market positioning and also as non-citizens. And the world of work is really characterized by an intersectional division of labor which constrains individual's choices of jobs according to gender, race, skills, age, and so forth. And migrant women are overrepresented in the more precarious, insecure and informal forms of employment which earns them low pay and little socio-legal recognition and where they have relatively little control over their working and social lives. And many of the disadvantages and inequalities migrant women are subjected to have been laid bare and are likely to continue to be made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. And these sort of general introductory marks really lead me to the main points I'd like to make here. The first one is related to the centrality of care. So female migrant workers both as care providers and classified in the era of COVID, obviously as essential workers but also women migrant workers as recipients of care. So their own needs and requirements in times of COVID as a vulnerable group and as non-citizens. And the second point related to the heightened urgency of delivering decent work and gender-responsive policies as part of labor migration governance at all levels and everywhere in the world. So on health, the health crisis really has unleashed by COVID has demonstrated that it's largely the labor of both migrant and non-migrant women which is keeping global health and social care systems running. Women constitute over 70% of global frontline health and social care workers, many of whom are migrants and they are disproportionately responsible for caring for patients affected by COVID-19 in both hospitals and care facilities as well as in private homes. And many other migrant women work as cleaners within hospitals and social care facilities. Nurses are, in particular, the vast majority of whom, of course, women remain severely overworked during the pandemic and are the most at risk of contracting the virus due to their interaction with patients and also as a result of insufficient access to personal protective equipment in terms of numbers but sometimes even simple things like the correct size. You and women has noted that during the pandemic women migrant workers in health settings, health care settings are at an increased risk of experiencing sexual harassment and violence from patients, patients, family members and other employees. And migrant care workers are also essential staff at long-term elderly care facilities which became COVID-19 epicenters in many countries around the world in part due to the working conditions which the care workers often hired on a part-time or hourly basis, which means they had to take on additional jobs in other care facilities or private homes in order to increase their working hours and make a living. And by doing so, they've been moving between facilities and in this way exacerbated the spread of the virus. Now another care sector concerns domestic work 7 million domestic workers worldwide. 80% are women and 11.5, these are obviously rough estimates, 11.5 millions are migrants. And in many cases, in many countries, migrant women in actual fact constitute a large proportion if not even the majority of domestic workers, in particular in Asia. And they work in private households often under living arrangements. And this sector was already before the pandemic one of the most marginalized, least protected, least organized and least valued employment sectors. And now due to the pandemic, women, migrant domestic workers are being placed in an often in an even more precarious position. So for those who continue working, there are grave concerns to do with lockdown which means sharing the private sphere with the entire household members, exposing them to increased levels not only of work but also violence and abusive behavior. And many migrant domestic workers were dismissed, of course, from their jobs and were as a result often unable to find new work or to return to their countries of origin due to border closures and limited travel options. And for those migrant domestic workers who had living positions, losing their job also means losing their accommodation and often also their work permits. So we have all read, I'm sure, the cases of migrant domestic workers who were dumped in front of embassies. And this raises the issue of course, also around responsibility for repatriation and what happens in such cases. And while I have so far mainly spoken about migrant women who work in health, social and domestic care services, it's important to underline the significant numbers of migrant workers who are employed in other labor market sectors equally deemed either as essential work around food services and so forth, but also in sectors which have experienced significant redundancies and loss of employment, whether it's tourism, hospitality and so forth. And also of course, migrant women sex workers who have been detrimentally impacted. So care and food related sectors were among, those sectors deemed essential and yet were also among those sectors which were where infections were particularly rampant. And in labor market sectors experiencing significant job losses such as tourism, hospitality and so forth, this has led to migrants inability to send the vital remittances home. And according to World Bank estimates, job losses due to COVID-19 will result in a 20% decrease in international remittances sent this year. Wage loss has not yet been calculated on a global scale, I believe, but the significance of this problem is evident from data on remittances and repatriation numbers and are also mirrored in some of the recent campaigns launched by civil society and trade union networks on wage justice. Now, in terms of women's exclusion their own needs for care and support in these times of crisis, they migrant women continue to face significant barriers to accessing services and it can be down to simple things such as language and information barriers which impede migrant women from accessing a variety of vital services and also importantly services around domestic violence the statistics of which have been reported around the world as having increased. And since migrant women often work in the informal economy on temporary contracts or in an irregular manner, we also have had little if any access to social protection, unemployment benefits and even healthcare. And migrant women, the migrant workforce especially women often remain outside of the scope of healthcare and maternity provisions and these types of exclusions really stem from a mix of immigration and employment laws which leave also migrants unable to access support packages of the kind we have seen elsewhere. Now, in conclusion, the worldwide head's crisis in its link to the world of work and jobs will have long-term social and economic impacts and this situation really demonstrates the importance of implementing the care and decent work related SDGs sustainable development goals and which were nicely displayed behind the ambassador and I was straight looking at goal eight and five so in this particular context the crucial sustainable development goals and also the relevant objectives of the global compact for migration and given the size of feminized migration and demand for workers in these highly gendered sectors it is vital that governments policy responses and guidelines are gender responsive and inclusive of migrant women. So the pandemic really has underpinned the importance of universal healthcare and decent working being accommodation and decent wages to allow frontline workers to continue carrying out vital service to keep society's going and those who will have lost their jobs to somehow get them through this crisis. So we need some form of global infrastructure which can deal with these kind of crises insurance systems and so forth and in the particular context of Asia the regional institutional infrastructure we felt could be useful in addressing these kind of issues for us such as the regional consultative processes sub regional entities such as ASEAN and importantly possibly also bilateral labor agreements which could or should be looked into in terms of including clauses on allocating clear responsibility in case of emergencies of this kind and responsibility for repatriation and lost wages and by very importantly having domestic work and migrant women in mind. And so really on this note what we need is really more than public clapping for essential workers which has been fantastic but we really need to look more at policies wage and employment protection social welfare rights freedom of organization and also reform immigration law. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Nicola and I recall that when I initially came to you actually with this idea of doing a paper on the kind of the global picture in terms of COVID-19 and impacts on women migrant workers are you sure like the global picture? But you've just I mean you've proved that there is need for this that yes there are regional variations yes there are also country level variations there are different ways of examining the issue but we also need to look at the global picture and you've done a great job in taking us through some of the key issues and linking it back to the sustainable development goals also how we actually create and build back filter if I can use that potentially overused phrase now in regards to exposing the desperate need really for decent work and you know healthcare and I think this is illustrative very much so and especially going into general assembly opening we will be focusing UN system UN country teams including I will be focusing on the socioeconomic impact and having gender mainstream throughout that will be critical in terms of making sure that we are utilising the information the evidence that people like yourselves are collecting on the ground in order to be able to craft sustainable responses and meet those targets for 2030 which we all know will be a very significant challenge going forward now we'll drill it down a little bit and we'll go to Marika and hear from her in regards to the region in particular and especially looking at I mean Marika also had a very hard task in many respects because taking the entire report of supporting brighter futures and looking at labour migration in Asia-Pacific and then stepping us through and examining the impacts in regards to COVID-19 and what we're likely to be looking at in the region for this particular you know very strategic approach so over to you Marika Thank you Marie and thank you Nicola for painting that picture I wish that the region looked different to the global picture but I feel that what I have to say we'll mirror all of the findings that you yourself presented by way of background as the ambassador said at the outset the background to my contribution was the support in brighter futures report that IOM released in 2019 and that was essentially comprised of six papers that looked at a range of issues from the linkage between migration and education intergenerational migration cycles the role of females as providers which my fellow Ken Loslan will speak to after All of these papers collectively paint a complex and rich picture from both a policy and programmatic perspective but also speak to some of the research gaps that need to be addressed Now of course 2019 already feels like a long time ago the world has shifted on its axis and in acknowledgement of that reality IOM invited me to offer a paper offering some brief speculative reflections on what COVID may mean for the findings in that paper I was very grateful Marie that your invitation saw off the brief and speculative findings because what can we really be these days other than speculative So my approach in confronting this task was essentially to look at some of the intersecting issues of the economic factors the social factors the cultural and structural dynamics of play and what may have changed as a result of this new world we find ourselves living in So obviously the one that I guess is most confronting to us and that we read about on a daily basis as disconcerting numbers go up and down every day is the economics of this and what emerged from the paper very strongly was that women are real agents of economic developments and indeed women are more reliant on remittances than males which is an interesting finding and for this reason female migration has been harnessed by many states as an anti-poverty strategy as a development strategy and anyone who's flown through Manila will see just what a profound role overseas foreign workers play indeed I think in 2018 IOM estimated that in that year alone remittances accounted for something like 33.83 billion dollars just for the Philippines in that year alone and then if we take the Pacific Island states where we have smaller states reliance there remittances can be quite extreme and account for a significant portion of GDP in the Samoa at something like 18% in Tonga at something like 40% so all of these you know quite arbitrary metrics that we have in a sense become a measure of what we can potentially move now the reality that we are now facing then is that we need to ask questions of when labor migration is restarted and redesigned how do we do it in a way that harnesses the gender dimensions of what we gain from it and that's a question that needs to inform policy moving forward to the social dimensions the paper presented some fascinating insights into the reasons that why women in the Asia Pacific move why they migrate why they're mobile including for instance to flee the gender expectations imposed on them but on the flip side also to fulfill those gender expectations and a really interesting dynamic in this too is the role of education so migration as a means of accessing education but also migration as a transformative educational experience itself both for women on the move but also for their families who are empowered in their educational choices by that migration so now of course as people are being stranded in various countries or unable to migrate to access education instead they're faced with an environment where they're facing increased competition for fewer opportunities and in every country in the world I think that what we would all agree we're seeing is a shift of education now taking place in online spaces so this to my mind raises questions about access to information communication technologies how to identify those access gaps and how to bridge them and obviously some of that that technological divide is owing to things like economics but it's also owing to factors such as gender and who is able to spend time on technology particularly when the women may be returning to traditional payrolls that before they weren't to the cultural dimensions now obviously culture is a very complex and loaded term and not one that I would think to to find and indeed culture is not a homogenous across countries within communities and in any given family so forgive the sweeping generalizations of what culture may mean here but the this the supporting part of the fact that cultural dimensions that play in origin countries and that a culture of migration plays out in the expectation of all women to migrate at a certain point to provide for their families the flip side of this though and in the context particularly of removal to urban migration there's also the phenomenon whereby the migration of women is problematized because it challenges those traditional gender roles so both things are at play and a key risk in this of course when migration is impeded by COVID and responses in place to it is what happens when females shift from becoming assets to their families to potentially becoming burdens to them and may be formed back into the gender norms that were challenged by their migration in receiving countries the culture of migration plays out here too as as Nicola mentions the feminization of so many roles including domestic work including health care for a child and elderly care and now on the front lines with as you said 70% of people on the front line of this pandemic female of women migrants so that has implications for who is exposed to this risk and I think now the test is how receiving countries will treat those workers and this is this is a test I think that was that we're still waiting to see the results of the question now for host countries is will they treat these these migrants as essential workers or will they treat them as dispensable and I think what happens there will really reveal true powers of many countries and I think also there's a discrepancy in treatment in respect of informal sectors and if we take sex work and the entertainment industries where the majority of workers in those women and many of them are migrants what we've seen in particularly in Southeast Asia is hundreds of thousands of sex workers who have been left with inadequate access to government health services and so there's an interesting cultural dynamic at play here too because on the one hand their labor significantly contributes to the economics of the country they're working in and so they're often abandoned by a culture that on one hand demands their labor but on the other hand stigmatizes what they do and prefers that they wouldn't exist so there's a lot to be unpacked I think in both origin and destination countries and their relationships with feminized migration finally the structural dimensions of play and I think it would be an easy outward beat just to say yep everything that was bad made migrants vulnerable is now just so much worse and I think that in many ways is true who take the situation of debt now migrants are incurring debt to survive from the basis of their job losses on top of those debts that they were already owing to things like recruitment and migration to access labor things like that are key sources of vulnerability to trafficking and exploitation and what do we do about that in life of insufficient opportunities to migrate safely and regularly I think that here what we're seeing as well is a dark side to COVID and migration policy as Nick and we're alluded to in some contexts and particularly for instance in maritime movements at the moment we've seen on one hand many states have have worked to make sure that they're still fulfilling their obligations to people and me on the other hand they're also pointing to COVID as a reason why they're not fulfilling those obligations and I think this raises complex issues I think everyone who works on these issues would agree that increased border and migration measures that have been put in place to respond to COVID where they're not carefully thought out will unquestionably increase smuggling and that in turn will increase vulnerability of certain categories of migrants but to close I mean it would be very tempting to end there and just leave all of this on a negative note but I don't think that's constructive and nor is it necessarily accurate because we're all still in flux we will be for an indeterminate time again I think what happens now wholly depends on what states learn from this and what policy decisions they make in response the fact that female migrants are vital to sending and receiving countries has been absolutely reinforced by COVID and hopefully COVID and its fallout will have really created a new commitment to this nexus between migration and development investment in migration is investment in development and hopefully now states will have an increased understanding that investment in safe and regular migration for women into fair and decent work is a incredibly obvious in a sense way of achieving a positive growth and strong returns on that investment so there's my optimistic note to end on and then otherwise not so bright future but thank you again for the opportunity thank you very much indeed Marika and I think that's you know so it's also strategic in terms of being able to end on that note and it's really a call to action I think you have talked about very much in regards to some of the you know the difficulties the challenges and the problems but we do know that responses by states and non-state actors will be critical to shaping recovery we know that we will recover globally but it's how fast how quickly what the kind of the consequences will be in terms of not being able to work in terms of international cooperation in particular areas we know also too and I certainly agree with you in terms of some of this being quite sort of speculative but the existing evidence base shows us where those pressure points are going to be we can tell as you highlighted very clearly in your presentation that women has been shown time and time again in different settings to remit more in terms of a proportion of their of their incomes overseas to families back home so we know that women and making sure that say for example remittance channels are open that they're able to be accessed that they are accelerated including through ICT which again you raised in terms of having real access challenges along gender lines we know that that's going to be part of recovering better recovering faster there's a lot of a myriad of different issues but being able to take us through the existing issues and then overlay it with where we know pressure points are going to be including especially as a specialist in smuggling and trafficking the darker side of COVID-19 and some of the very significant challenges that are occurring on that front is highly relevant for all regions throughout the world but I know especially for Asia Pacific and my own background that it's a particular challenge for this region so thank you very much indeed we will I'm sure get lots of questions in in the Q&A session I will now hand over to Lan who will be able to take us through her excellent paper that she provided for us and we commissioned her to write in the context of the bigger report to take us through and step us through some of her findings and then really to talk about the implications in regards to COVID-19 so over to you Lan thank you Marie can you hear me yeah thank you very much for this opportunity as Marie said like a long time ago so my paper was published in the supporting brighter futures report that was published in September 2019 but I think you know following nicely from the two papers focus on the global outlook this is a great case study to illustrate the importance of female migration and the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for women and girls who participate in migration and their families back home my paper is focused on labor migration in mainland Southeast Asia the sub you know a small sub region and with a quick overview of migration from Pacific islands so much of international labor migration in Southeast in mainland Southeast Asia is Thailand Belt intra-regional and irregular and because scholars estimate that much of labor migration within the sub region is undocumented so the statistics we have here is just indicative for example the official data for labor for foreign labor migrants in Thailand in 2017 show that about 65% of these over 2 million people were from Myanmar 17% were from Cambodia however other academic sources indicate that up to 1 million Cambodians are currently working in Thailand so this is severely under reported and migrants from now account for 7.5% of the migrants in Thailand according to the official statistics so Vietnam is the only country in the sub region that lies outside the Thailand Belt migration system however it is the largest source of contract migrant workers among mainland Southeast Asian countries and in 2018 Vietnam reported half a million contract workers overseas and in 2017 the Vietnamese government deployed 131,000 contract workers and most of these workers were sent to East Asia Taiwan, Republic of Korea and Japan all together host about 90% of Vietnamese contract workers and about 42% of workers were female no matter how significant international migration labor migration in mainland Southeast Asia is it is eclipsed by internal migration so the latest UN statistics estimate that the number of internal migrants in mainland Southeast Asian countries is about three times larger than the number of international labor migrants in Cambodia the proportion of internal migrants in the national population is particularly high accounts for internal migrants account for nearly 29% of the national population in other countries the proportion of internal migrants are lower ranging from 9.6 in Thailand to 19.3 in Myanmar however this shows that the significance and the importance of migration for families and households in the sub region and both migration and remittances are particularly gendered migration from and within mainland Southeast Asian countries has become increasingly feminized in the last three decades in Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos the women have outnumbered men in internal and internal migration flows and most the most important internal migration in these countries is from rural areas to urban areas in Thailand and Cambodia women account for just under half of the total number of internal migrants and as Merica has indicated qualitative research has shown that women migrant women and girls tend to be more consistent and reliable remittances however migrant men tend to remit larger amounts of money home probably due to the gender wage differences between men and women because men tend to be employed in higher pet occupations what has driven the migration of women and girls from mainland Southeast Asian countries in the last few decades I here I provide four main reasons that have contributed to the growth in female labor migration the most important factor is the rapid urbanization and industrialization in the sub region the increased disparities in income employment and standards of living between rural and urban areas in these countries and among countries in Asia responsible for this unprecedented growth in female labor migration the gender segregated labor market is also important there's a growing demand for cheap and docile female labor especially from rural areas in the manufacturing industries services and the informal economy and gender norms have been found to be an important contributing factor as well female migration in the sub region is motivated and enabled by the moral obligations for girls to provide for the family in Vietnam and Laos the two socialist countries female education and employment have been promoted and women are encouraged to participate in income generating activities and therefore female labor migration is in fact an important household livelihood strategy and female labor migration has multiple benefits as well as challenges research shows that women and girls tend to experience an increase in their economic autonomy and personal freedom and their families benefit from the remittances they experience an improvement in their incomes and standards of living and it has made important contributions to poverty creation in labor sending communities and all these important economic contributions that girls and women have made to their families and their communities has shown to have led to an increase in girls value and weakened the norm of some preference however because the labor market and migration are deeply gendered there are also multiple risks and challenges associated with female labor migration women and girls tend to work in the informal economy in very precarious and exploitative conditions and the jobs that they can access tend to be low paid and so they are more vulnerable than men to labor exploitation and sexual abuse and violence and especially if they migrate under the undocumented status and they tend to live in very poor conditions and don't have adequate access to social and health services which have important implications for their ability to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of a culture of migration in labor sending communities has also led to concerns about the negative impacts of this new culture on girls aspirations and on the tendency for girls to drop out of school at a young age in order to participate in labor migration and because of the overlap of labor migration pathways and trafficking routes young girls have been rendered vulnerable to traffic and they tend to be lured by promises of employment a very quick overview of labor migration from the pacific so opportunities labor migration opportunities from pacific islands are very limited and the main opportunities are in the seafaring sector and in the seasonal labor programs in australia and new zealand however both of these sectors are heavily dominated by males only 14 percent of women are represented by the workers in the seasonal labor programs in australia and new zealand the benefits are very important for their families back home in terms of remittances and skill acquisition for themselves skills such as time management financial literacy and english are considered very important by migrants however because women tend to be relegated to manual low-paid jobs such as packing products on the on the farm they tend to be paid less than than than men and female labor migration remains very limited because of restrictive gender norms about female mobility and because of the specific demand for male labor from employers in in the seafaring sector and in australia and new zealand a very positive development in australia is the the was the launch of the australia specific labor scheme a non-seasonal low and semi-skilled employment program in 2018 and this has brought hope for addressing female unemployment and gender inequalities in the pacific given that just less than one third of women in the pacific are formally employed so here i provide some very quick you know figures to illustrate the important of labor the growing importance of labor migration from the pacific however the the participation of women in these schemes remains a very limited so far and to conclude here i provide a few reflections on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic for migrant women and girls because they tend to concentrate in in the informal sector and they tend to work in very precarious situations the the pandemic has amplified their social exclusion and disadvantages and they don't have adequate access to formal public health services during the pandemic as well as welfare networks and they also tend to concentrate in the sectors that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic including retail tourism manufacturing and services and the problems they are facing now include layoffs non-payment of wages forced or premature return in debtor ness and food security as we all know labor migration from this region is mostly debt finance and debt induced so a premature return entails a significant amount of debt for the women and their families and many especially sex workers are stranded so they face a dilemma they you know they cannot return home even if they want to because commercial flights have been suspended and borders have been closed but staying means continuing to work in unsafe environments and all facing unemployment homelessness and food insecurity and sex workers there's a massive population of transient sex workers in the region thanks to the visa free regime in the ASEAN and these workers face income loss homelessness food insecurity and immobility and high risk of COVID-19 infection and the Australia seasonal worker program and the Pacific Labor scheme were suspended for six months it was suspended in March and it has just been reopened but with multiple restrictions including quarantine and so on so I'm not certain about the impact of this for women workers from the Pacific thank you let me stop sharing thank you very much indeed and I've got some questions that have come through on the chat specifically for you so I might go to those couple sort of first and then there are some general questions for all of the panelists so if we can do it that way I will just turn to those questions one specifically Lan is really asking you about the reverse migration impacts on employment livelihood and agriculture in rural southeast Asia because of COVID-19 and whether you have any insights in regards to those sort of specificities you have outlined those particularly in the last slide but we do know that mobility has very significantly reduced if not completely shut down and as you pointed to the Pacific seasonal workers program for example a lot of suspensions in regards to you know recruitment agencies who may be working a lot of suspensions in regards to formal programs but if you have any insights in terms of what's actually happening in terms of reverse migration that would be great thank you thank you Marie I'm not really sure about the you know what the person who asked the question mean by reverse migration do they mean return migration yeah because I think it's too early to make any conclusion about the impact of COVID-19 on rural livelihoods because most of the workers are still stranded for example based on my anecdotal evidence I know that a lot of workers in Japan have been laid off all the students who have migrated to Japan primarily for work not for studies they have lost their jobs and they're hungry and they don't receive any support they receive very little support from the Japanese government and commercial flights have been suspended for many months and so they cannot return home so it's it's too early to say to comment on impact on the families who are left behind but I based on what I have read about the workers who were stranded by the government you know those who have paid up to 10 000 of dollars in brokerage fees in order to migrate and then just before they managed to leave Vietnam they you know COVID the pandemic escalated and so they are stranded and they mostly many of them borrow money from loan sharks from money lenders with high interest rate so this is a significant significant problem for families migrant families in in in in Vietnam but that's about contract labor migrants I haven't done research on undocumented migrants in other mainland Southeast Asian countries so it's I cannot comment on that as yet right thank you very much and I do you certainly agree that they're probably the question rather than reverse migration but is return and you're quite right to point out stranded migrants stranded migrants of all different types of genders in locations all around the world has been a critical issue it's certainly something that IOM has been assisting with and our original director from Asia Pacific Net Motors I'm sure we'll talk about that towards the end of our webinar session but we've got a couple of sort of general questions that I will ask all of the panelists that have come through there has been very clear I guess synergy right the way through all three presentations in regards to the very important role of migrant women workers who are providing you know remittances livelihood strategies in the region and globally but of course there are heightened vulnerabilities in certain sectors and in certain geographic locations in the context of a slowing down economy and the impacts in regards to remittances and recovery just like your insights in terms of what we might be looking at in terms of migrant decision making and how that might be manifested with a very different scenario emerging particularly in regards to women and girls in labour migration we should also recall too that while this is focusing on labour migration there have been very significant protection challenges for those who are in need of international protection and humanitarian assistance and have been unable to to move I think Marika pointed to that in regards to border measures and the increased risk of smuggling and trafficking but if I can first really ask you all for your insights in regards to how you think migrant decision making based on this very fluid environment might manifest itself based on the existing research and evidence that would be great is it a question for me it's a question for all panel members so Nicola maybe we'll start with you yeah thanks Mary actually it's it's ironic because this is exactly one of the elements which are you know a research component of one of these large research projects I happen to be involved in funded by the British government and migrant decision making one of the important components but because of COVID of course none of the field work along other the various migration corridors we are testing was able to be conducted but we are actually going to do a big survey and migrant decision making is going to be part of it so which really means one of the reasons why I hesitate is sort of putting myself immediately up is it's very hard to come up with you know a concrete answer at this moment in time next year we will have some concrete data but I guess as you know my fellow panelists were hinting at the problem is the pressure will rise everywhere so most likely we will unfortunately I I guess this is what you know a lot of experts are saying we will see more smuggling and more trafficking and more migrants trying to find work elsewhere because this is one fundamental element I suppose in us human beings this and again research has shown this over decades despite you know information campaigns and so forth there is fundamentally deep down this this idea you know and the being more prone to taking risks and thinking okay I've got to try and I actually might be fine yes there's all this stuff happening but I'm going to be fine I've just got to try so I guess we will we will definitely see more pressure on you know migrants trying to find work trying to find it overseas and and using routes which are unfortunately not the legal and pathways but really concrete data how migration decision making is going to be impacted I can report next year thanks Nicola and it is it is going to change the dynamics that's for sure but that that as you pointed out that very rich body of existing evidence around migrant decision making in different settings does point to you know some of the capacity for risk making so we will be we know that that's going to be a hotspot for example so there is an area where you know responses policy responses will definitely be shaping people's lives and having an impact certainly in regards to human rights that's for sure Marika I know you that you have some very deep insights on this particularly in regards to the region given your extensive body of work especially in relation to smuggling and trafficking but also the interaction and the engaged intersection with migrants in their communities through those sorts of processes I mean we have seen for example over recent years the continuous sort of morphing of smuggling which ends up resulting in people being trafficked so I'd really like to get your insights in that particular area and then we'll hand over to land thanks sure um I would certainly echo what what Nicola says and I look forward to her more important studies on this but I guess to simply respond to the migrant decision making question we can't really make a decision that you don't have you know where are the choices and the the overlay of COVID and the restrictions that have been put in place with respect to migration with respect to labor in every country in South East Asia and the Pacific without exception is tantamount to restriction of choices so the policy response then is to say okay how can we augment those choices and make them ones that are safer that is the clear way of undercutting you know the smuggling and the trafficking phenomenon and I think you're absolutely right Marie that the the intersection between smuggling and trafficking and other forms of exploitation and abuse will become more acute and we're seeing that playing out in the most harrowing ways where if someone can't be delivered into exploitation they can still be detained and tortured for ransom and this is a very effective way of making a buck particularly where states are busy looking elsewhere and I think that one thing that really compounds that in this region is the fact that there's a really strong appetite to address trafficking there's increased understanding of what trafficking means by and large legislation is in place to to increase that kind of response and to make it coherent response to smuggling is lagging and I think that's a clear thing that we could start to address and you know in my spirit of not being always pessimistic I think we need to really capture and canvas the positive measures that have been put in place and making sure that they stick around once COVID is dealt with so we don't undo some of the good that we have done in addressing some of these issues thanks very very good point and it's always a like a refreshing how you end up on a more positive note but that's going to be a critical issue and also measuring that too in terms of being able to look at the effectiveness of particular responses in a COVID environment because if they are arguably you know effective during COVID they will be sustainable so this is going to be a very sort of testing period I think for the international community for states and for other non-state actors line over to you really if you've got any insights given your sort of rich history of doing research in the region in regards to migrant decision-making and how that might be sort of manifested in the minds of migrants as they are making decisions in regards to their futures and future migration options thanks thank you Marie I would refrain from making any sweeping generalization about migration decision-making because context are so different for example you know my last project is on undocumented migration from Vietnam to Russia and as I follow the news and social media and so on I know that even at the peak of the pandemic where Russia reported up to 10,000 new COVID cases per day they still didn't you know implement a quarantine policy for international arrivals and therefore and and Russian still they are still allowed to shop they go to markets or that's where most undocumented migrants work and so the my research informants have told me that their cell has actually been much better since the onset of the pandemic and so people from Vietnam are still coming in the pandemic apparently hasn't data hasn't affected their their migration plan at all however if I look at the mainland Southeast Asian region which my my paper is focused on because much of labor migration in this region is undocumented irregular and low paid I don't expect to see any major changes in terms of decision-making because you know migration is survival individual survivor and household survival and and the outbreak the pandemic has been relatively successful successfully contained in in the sub region and so I expect that people continue to migrate and continue working at the destination and if borders remain closed I would expect to see that we see an increase in internal migration for example in Vietnam the people who cannot migrate overseas because of the the temporary suspension of the contract labor migration programs has chosen to migrate internally to work excellent and that's very very good insights in particular in regards to your point around the variability in in regards to geography in particular corridors and the nature of those corridors it just reminded me of a remark that Nicola made earlier on about the remittance projections we are looking at the forecasts of 20 decline globally the World Bank has predicted that but we need to be testing and looking at all of the data and the evidence as it comes out because we know for example that in particular corridors we've seen very significant increases in remittance inflows to origin countries again it's also we don't have that granularity yet and we don't have a comprehensive picture but your point is exactly right learn in terms of making sure that we are not making those generalizations and being able to look at specific issues in context and also historically that is something that I think we know overall globally that there will be a remittance decline because of the socio-economic sort of downturn and the economic issues that we will be facing because of the the stop but the implications are going to be highly different from the key area for migration research going forward so we can share that. Sorry Nenette I was I didn't hear that sorry Nenette was that you speaking I didn't I was just going to comment Marie that the presentation is very so rich that maybe it could be great if this can be shared widely if it's possible if the speakers agree over all right sorry I couldn't quite I'm you're breaking up I'm really sorry I couldn't hear it Marie can you hear me now it's it's a bit it's a bit patchy Nenette I'm sorry there's a there's a chat function that you can just send the panellists or me a message if that might be useful yeah we'll do thanks and we will certainly be coming to you shortly to hear your final remarks and closing for us that would be great I've also had some questions really and I'm not sure who can answer this I'll open this up to all of the panellists in regards to the small number of women workers on employment schemes is this due to strict requirements so that's the first kind of part of the question and does this result in undocumented movements due to lack of legal pathways I think the question if I'm not mistaken it's from Diego who's in South Africa so we're talking more broadly rather than just the region but any insights and if anybody can offer a response that would be great yeah over to you Nicola thanks not entirely sure if I understand the question correctly but women on employment schemes if the question means women who are hired as temporary contract migrants as we see you know particularly widespread in Asia the Asia Pacific region you know where most migrants at least legal migration is managed through temporary contract migration in this particular context Covid really has resulted in massive numbers of repatriation you know you know loss of work repatriation and loss of wages and I would say in this particular context what Marie said about remittances decline and in other contexts we've seen remittances increase those migrants would have definitely you know contributed to the decline in remittances because the rise in remittances I personally suspect might have come from long-term diaspora communities around the world now if the in the context of a Covid support scheme so to put women on employment support of what's what's the word here employment insurance or pay protection in our paper we had a few positive a good practice examples for example from Canada you know where migrant workers in the agricultural sector benefited from pay protection and were also eligible for employment insurance a few European countries put this in place to notably Spain Portugal and Ireland and this is you know all you could find in terms of you know positive examples where migrant women migrants in general and migrant women in particular were actually able to access employment protection insurance schemes but these were in worldwide relatively small cases unfortunately. Thanks Nicola I wanted to open up and see if Marika or Len had any additional comments no from Marika Len. Yeah I if I you know we look at the mainland South East Asian region the increase in female labour migration from countries in this region can be explained by the lack of formal employment opportunities for young girls young women and girls because they are less likely to have higher education qualifications and because also of the gender segregated labour market they the their employment opportunities in in the former economy tend to be more restricted than men's and undocumented migration labour migration seems like the the only choice for many if they want to earn cash income. Exactly and that you know that that I think you talked about earlier you know survival migration being you know very prevalent in certain corridors and I think that goes straight to the point that that sometimes and we had another paper actually within the context of supporting brighter futures which looked at intergenerational kind of aspects in regards to migration and the pressure for some communities and some families including young women and adolescent girls even if they want to actually remain at home and to forge a life in their origin countries the intergenerational cycles of migration mean that often they have to to migrate internationally you know including in in really precarious and sometimes vulnerable positions I have a very important question we're nearly at the close but this one I wanted to post it to everybody including the ambassador she's still online but I think she's had to go it's one for all of us in in regards to what can be done from a donor's perspective and I'm sure we all have some thoughts on this it's something that we it's certainly in IOM that we are constantly sort of grappling with because there does seem to be such a great need and the need to also prioritize and coordinate amongst donors and amongst organizations civil society organizations and I include academics within that international organizations to ensure that we're providing value for money but most importantly being effective in regards to you know protecting and safeguarding and improving effective responses in regards to international and internal migration so I'm sure you have some quite clear views I will hand it over first to Marika and then we can go to Nicola and Lam. Thanks Marie it's a it's a really interesting and so now it's really a good opportunity for the very business to make a few complaints and that would be for design programs that do mainstream gender considerations and females when talking about gender we need to look at how much to talk about that needs to be addressed so I think to calibrate what when we're looking at so we're going to close learnings around and it's aggregating data in the right ways and increasingly you know we're trying to shift from global to more local actually let me thinking about what that might and yeah I think it's the mainstream these considerations that end up I guess to be expected and risk getting it wrong. Thanks Nicola yes over to you thanks. Yeah that's an excellent question I would like to take back to my second key point about the urgency of addressing decent work issues and in this in this context I have to say I've just happened to actually read a review paper which is from 2017 so which is on how donors support the decent work agenda it only looked at five donors and the very broad result of this paper was the way in which donors have addressed decent work is fairly indirect and there's an awful lot of room to do much more and why is this important for two reasons one is to you know to kind of address the so-called drivers of migration and now you know as we know so many migrants have been laid off return repatriates there is also really this issue of alternatives at home so to speak but also at the workplace where the migrate to so really at both ends so I guess again because I'm here sort of this global person I would just kind of say a lot more this area of decent work there is an awful lot more that can be done. Yes land please. Thank you Marie I think there's an important area of intervention that has been overlooked by donors in the development of affordable and safe migration pathways especially for undocumented migrants you know like in the mainland south of this Asia much of migration in that sub region is to Thailand and despite the multiple memorandum of understandings between Thailand and Laos and Myanmar and Cambodia people still choose to migrate irregularly because it is too expensive and too complex and and such a lengthy process to migrate as an MOU migrant for example Cambodia has the most complex bureaucratic and expensive passport process in in Asia probably in the world it takes months and it takes a few brides and it's very costly to obtain a passport and in order in order to register as an MOU migrant in Thailand people have to pay fees and the fees are not cheap and therefore a lot of them especially women and girls who migrate to do domestic work which doesn't pay much choose to migrate as an irregular migrant because they can only afford thank you thank you very much and that is certainly an area from a past life having worked for a long time in the Australian government where the technical capacity building was a key issue as part of both multilateral cooperation and also bilateral support and relationships because quite often it's you know those kind of say you've just highlighted the passport procedures but they can be what has existed in certain parts of the world you know three decades two decades ago and it's often about technology cost you know the ability to actually get regimes put up that can be very useful in terms of reducing time as you mentioned and reducing cost and the the burden including a relation to you know public officials but also for migrants themselves so it's an ongoing challenge and I know that different parts of the world donors are very keenly aware of this and and certainly are focused on it I will hand over with her enormous patience thank you so much Nenette I will hand over to Nenette Motus who is IOM's regional director in Asia Pacific a very large region she has a huge job and I would really like her to sum up to provide us with some closing remarks and comments because as as you know many people know but Nenette more than others that there are a whole range of different responses that are being undertaken but it's a strategic issue that IOM is keenly focused on in terms of the labour migration of women and adolescent girls and it's something that is certainly on our radar and on our priority list for the future so Nenette please allow me to hand over to you and thank you again for your patience we are a bit over time. Henry can you hear me well it's my audio okay perfect thank you um it's been great pleasure to close today's webinar on behalf of IOM I would like to thank Ambassador Guevara and all the speakers for the very rich presentation especially for me coming from this region and perspectives your perspectives and for the insightful research findings our sincere thanks also go to the gender equality branch of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs in Spain without which much of this research would not have been made possible. Support for rigorous evidence-based research for the longer term impacts of COVID-19 on migration and migrants generally and here on women migrant workers is critically important to ensure that responses to the pandemic and its direct and indirect impacts are inclusive and promote the health safety social protection of individuals their families and the society and communities the COVID-19 pandemic has really unveiled and put a spotlight on the acute as well as significant inequalities as characterized labor migration in particular women labor migrants the direct impacts and the indirect consequences of COVID-19 are still unfolding and will continue to be felt and existing inequalities exacerbated in the months and years to come it is indeed then essential that the responses to COVID-19 incorporates a whole of government as well as whole society approach and that they are gender responsive and taking into account the specific experiences of the needs of women labor migrants and their families and communities through research and dialogue. Moreover this lesson also doesn't provide a critical reminder that it is now time to address the diverse inequalities and vulnerabilities underlying our societies including gender related ones in a more systematic and sustainable manner. This is a particular importance in Southeast Asia and the Pacific given the rich the high rate of women of female labor migration as in other regions gender inequality appears to be linked to the driver's underpinning migration of women. There is arguably a need to strive for existing efforts and dialogue to tackle gender inequality within countries as a key development priority. It would help to reduce the structural social economic factors associated with the types of migration that are most harmful to women and which tend to be even more prevalent in times of crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic mainly irregular migrations smuggling and trafficking in persons which are also referred in this and the presentation presentations today. The COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted that traditionally gendered migration policies may not necessarily be keeping up with the feminization of migration and the central role played by women migrant workers for countries of origin as well as in destination. As already mentioned during this webinar migrant women workers have been at the front line confronting the pandemic. In the longer term there is doesn't need to rethink migration policies to better reflect the gender dimensions of labor migration and keep pace with the changing roles and the needs of women both as migrants and as left behind to support families and their communities. The discussions today remain of course explorative as the impacts of the pandemic are constantly evolving and the migration policy responses are also interrupting flux. More research for the short and longer term impacts of the pandemic on women migrant workers will remain immediate to inform policy making in the future. Hence it is really our hope that this explorative explorative research will lie on the laid ground for more in-depth research on the topic so as to support inclusive gender sensitive responses and future crises as well as increased and improved mainstreaming of gender into migration policies. Ladies and gentlemen and this team colleagues thank you again very much for your participation in today's webinar. We wish you a very nice day or evening and depending on the time zone you are in. Thank you again. Thank you Marie. Thank you so much Nanette for closing and a final thank you goes to the research unit for the assistance both in terms of the project which as I mentioned has been going for a long time but also today's webinar so thank you very much indeed. Thank you to all the panelists for your excellent closing remarks Nanette and also to our attendees who are online. We hope you've enjoyed the webinar and we look forward to seeing you online virtually again soon. Thank you. Thank you.