 My name is Jeffrey Labovitz, I'm the regional director for East and the Horn of Africa for the International Organization for Migration and I'm here in Accra Ghana for a conference which is supported by the European Union for remittances. The remittances are very important in sub-Saharan Africa. About 38 billion dollars, a lot of money, are sent home every year by Africans who are running abroad. However, it's one of the highest remittance corridors in the whole world, which means that the cost for sending back money is higher than in Africa than many other places in the world. In the last decade, there's been progress, it's been reduced by two and a half percent to about 9.4 percent, but that's still an extremely high cost for people who are working very, very hard in sending back generally very small sums of money. And ultimately, remittances are the story of people and people who should keep their wages, who are sending money home, who are working to stabilize their communities and their families. Coming together with a whole bunch of different partners from civic society, NGOs, the United Nations and banking institutions, we're looking at ways where we can meet the Millennium Development Goals, goals to reduce remittances to around 3 percent and we have a long way to go. We also have the Global Compact on Migration, which has 23 recommendations and recommendation number 20 is to reduce remittance costs and that's what we're here to do.