 with what promises to be another interesting knowledge cafe. Levin, I'm pleased to see so many familiar names and faces. My name is Joshua Gifford. I'm a policy expert in the UN Collaboration Unit, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. I work along with colleagues from UNDT, ILO, UNICEF, and UNFPA, support the Integrated Policy Practitioners Network for the benefit of colleagues who are joining us for this time. The IPPM is an agency network of the UN under the auspices of the UN SDG Task Team on Integrated Policy Support. Dedicated to strengthening the integrated policy support, the UN system provides to its members and other program countries. The IPM aims to accelerate the achievement of the 2030 UNDF-assistingable Development by enhancing the practice of integrated policy approaches through the strengthening of development practitioners' capabilities for SDG integration and exploration, and expanding knowledge and experience on the practical applications of integrated approaches to drive development impacts and deliver on the SDGs. The network was launched in November 2021 and is open to professionals and stakeholders from member states, academia, and civil society. In essence, the IPPM provides us a safe space to discuss and share experiences on the practice of providing integrated policy support, as well as how the UN can enhance its system-wide capability to deliver high-quality integrated policy for the cross-factors and sectors. This Knowledge Cafe webinar series resolved the pillars of the IPPM and the crew's momentum to build the IPPM community and offer ongoing engagement opportunities. It focuses on building the IPPM membership capacity to understand better, assistance perspective on policy integration acceleration, including issues that embody systems thinking on SDG implementation, helping us to understand and identify how to act and interact, address interconnected and interdependent development challenges. It also assists us to understand integrated policy solutions, including curation of tools and resources that support design and implementation of cross-cutting policy solutions. This is the sixth Knowledge Cafe webinar, and we'll explore how an integrated approach to migration, sustainable reintegration and development, can accelerate the 2030 agenda. We have an opportunity of tapping into the wealth and knowledge and experiences which the International Organization for Migration has built upon its extensive work and expertise and through global research on good practices and lessons learned, identify approaches and guidance for active writing and reintegration assistance around safe and dignified return and sustainable integration. In today's presentation, we'll hear how IOM sought states and practitioners to empower returning miners from an integrated policy perspective, operationalizing its comprehensive approach through the integration handbook which was published in 2019. And also the establishment of an EU IOM knowledge management hub dedicated to turn and sustainable integration for capacity development, sharing of tools and policy practitioners. We'll practice policy practitioners. I'm delighted to introduce and welcome our IOM colleagues, today's presenters, Tomas Ernst and Joy Palmy. Tomas manages the mainstream and migration international cooperation and development initiative at the IOM regional office in Brussels. Tomas and his team create tools to support migration and development planning within EU institutions, EU delegations, EU and agencies and EU and country teams. The goal of this work is to integrate migration across all sectors of development and to elevate migration within the EU with a specific focus of supporting UNSDGs. Tomas previously worked with the IOM regional office for Asia and the Pacific as a socioeconomic response officer and senior regional labor mobility and human development officer. He has previously worked for IOM in Iran, Tunisia and spent about a decade working with the UN and the World Bank in Europe, Asia Pacific, East Africa and the Middle East. Joy is a project officer for capacity building as part of the EU IOM knowledge management hub at the IOM headquarters Geneva. She has over nine years of work experience in the field of migration in the US, Switzerland, in case management, all of lies in project management and in EU, recently focusing on migration. So before handing the floor to Joy and Tomas, I'm just a few housekeeping rules. First, this session is recorded and we're hosted on the IPPN page on Sparkloo and EU. We kindly ask you that you mute your mics for the duration of this webinar but the chat function will remain open and available for you to share your questions or reflections in the presentation. And as the name implies, the Knowledge Cafe really promotes some interactive discussions. So we would encourage you to share your thoughts and we'll open the stage for you to open and share any questions or comments we might have. So over to you now, Tomas. Thanks a lot, Joshua, and great to be here at the IPPN today and this afternoon. So my name is Tomas Ernst and I am the program manager at IOM in our regional office in Brussels and I work as part of IOM's migration and sustainable development team which aims to support development and migration practitioners to leverage migration for sustainable development in all communities. Specifically here in Brussels, I am managing an EU funded project focused on mainstream migration into international cooperation and development. And through the work of this project, we've been able to build partnerships within the UN system to work holistically across mandates and sectors and really focusing on one United Nations and with national and local governments to make the complex and mutually reinforcing connections between migration and development easier and simpler for development partners to spot and meaningfully reflect in their own projects and programs. So before getting into how this can be done, I first want to explain why, why are we doing this? Why is it important to consider migration within efforts to advance the sustainable development around the world and achieve the STGs and sustainable development goals? So to answer this question, I want to first start with a story about Serja. Move to the next slide on Serja, please. Serja is a Nepali man from Japa who like many of the families in rural Nepal relied on agriculture for their livelihood and for his livelihood. He had to drop out of school at a young age to take over responsibilities at home when his father became ill. To help make ends meet, he decided to move to Qatar and then Dubai to work and support his family. In early 2020, he returned to Nepal to attend his brother's wedding. And as we know, soon after the COVID pandemic, I hit the world. He made plans to return to Dubai as soon as possible when he heard the news that the United Arab Emirates was implementing a lockdown. So it was obviously not to lose his employment. Unfortunately, it was too late as the lockdown was already in place and all flights were canceled. With the only source of income for the family taken, his family was unable to settle their debts. And when creditors started to knock on the door and demand the money that was owed, they then had to borrow from elsewhere to settle their current debts, again, putting them into a cycle of financial debt. Unfortunately, Serja's story is all too common. Serja's story, I think, highlights some of the reasons why it's important to consider the interlinguages between migration and sustainable development. So for starters, emigrating from Nepal was seen as an opportunity for him to provide for himself and his family back home, reducing poverty and inequality and making it easier to access and afford services such as education and healthcare. A lack of employment opportunities back home in Nepal was a development challenge that was one of the drivers impacting his decision to migrate. And furthermore, COVID-19 meant that he returned to Nepal with limited access to livelihood opportunities, difficulties in accessing financial services, as I mentioned, and health concerns obviously regarding the pandemic. Taking a wider review of some of these issues that speaks to several compounding development challenges I think the world continues to face to this day, including the COVID-19 pandemic, growing inequality, rising levels of poverty, a climate crisis and surging conflicts. Next slide, please. To respond to these challenges, the UN Secretary General has raised the alarm. These are urging the international community to act in more integrated ways. And I think this means moving beyond silos and making our approaches and policies more coherent. And I think this is really crucial when we talk about migration in all its forms, whether it's return migration, forced displacement, displacement labor migration and so on. Migration is one of the mega trends of our time. We will not solve all these other challenges that we don't consider mobility. And if we aren't able to leverage the positive benefits that migration can bring the migrants in our communities through better managed, safe, orderly and regular migration. By integrating migration into development cooperation in meaningful and effective ways, I think we can better achieve wider development outcomes like quality education, good health and wellbeing and importantly, decent work as outlined in the SDGs. So for example, investment in quality education for migrants along with communities can enhance the types of skills needed to fill labor gaps and gaps in the market in the labor market. Therefore not only addressing unemployment, but also addressing labor shortages. And this has wider ripple effects. Harnessing migration's potential can have big impacts on national growth and development. And there was a recent IMF study that showed every additional percentage of immigration has the potential to boost GDP growth by 2% in destination countries. So each of us has a role to play to rise to the challenge and promote sustainable development around the world. And we can only aspire to achieve this by working together and leveraging the potential of migration while minimizing inequalities and vulnerabilities. Next slide, please. So the reasons for mainstreaming or integrating migration to accelerate progress towards sustainable development outcomes are numerous, but I'd like to highlight a few here. One, it makes development cooperation much more inclusive and rights-based. Human rights are inherent to all human beings, including migrants. Nevertheless, migrants can still face specific vulnerabilities, a fact that has been recognized in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. They can be politically disenfranchised and may lack access to basic services, which can prevent them from exercising their human rights and constrain their contribution to sustainable development. Development cooperation mentions are, therefore, more inclusive and rights-based when their impact on migrants and migrants' potential contribution to the implementation of them are taking into account. Number two, I think it helps to identify and address challenges and opportunities. So there's two-way links between migration and sustainable development, but they're not always considered. In particular, migrants' potential to improve their own livelihoods and the potential migrants to contribute to development of their communities of origin and destination, and this can result in unexplored opportunities and unmitigated risks. Third, it makes development cooperation more coherent and effective. Development interventions in one sector may affect migration of migrants in a way that affects development outcomes in another sector. So for instance, interventions that aim to develop skills can increase immigration if suitable jobs are not available. This can, in turn, lead to an initial outflow of capital, which ultimately can generate reminces, which we know is the money that migrants are sending home to their families, and these reminces may be challenged towards investment in other sectors. So integrating migration means better understanding those linkages and ensuring that development cooperation is more coherent across sectors. Next slide, please. So how can we actually do this? Where can practitioners, excuse me, like yourselves, start? Under the mainstream migration project that I mentioned before, we have developed concrete guidance and tools to really catalyze action and trigger change with regards to how we approach development work in relation to migration. Concretely, our project aims to contribute to effective mainstreaming of migration in international cooperation and development policy by strengthening the process of integrating migration into the international cooperation and development policy of the European Union, other donors and partners, and also increasing awareness and supporting efforts of partner countries to integrate migration in their development policy. So to arrive at this improved understanding, both conceptually and operationally, we developed a package of resources in close collaboration with a wide range of UN partners. Over 11 different UNHCs helped us co-develop some of these resources. So part one of our package of resources is a focus on guidelines, which introduces background information, facts and figures, conceptual frameworks, and essentially key resources to support migration mainstreaming efforts. Part two are the toolkits of our package of resources, and these contain a series of tools for mainstream migration into the European Union and other donors international cooperation and development efforts. But it's also useful for any practitioner really looking to integrate migration into their topic of work. And these include a toolkit for general use and a set of toolkits to be used specifically for mainstream migration across development sectors, nine different development centers. So for example, there's toolkits on migration and climate change, health and education, and tools in the toolkits on things like indicator banks, theories of change, stakeholder analysis, problem analysis, situation analysis, and so on. And moving beyond the theoretical and the knowledge products, we've already piloted several of these tools in practice in real life situations. We recently held a session with the European Union delegation in Cairo to support them with integrating migration into the development priorities for the country of Egypt. We've also worked with national and local governments in Ecuador, Nepal, Madagascar, and Kenya. And interestingly in Ecuador, the mainstream migration toolkits were adapted and localized to support 120 decentralized autonomous governments in Ecuador with integrating migration into the four year local development and territorial management plans. So again, mainstreaming in practice beyond just the knowledge products. And finally, part three of this package of resource is the training, which brings the content of the guidelines and toolkits to life through a blended learning approach that consists of an e-learning course and complementary webinars. So the tools can really help practitioners from any kind of background to work on and consider migration and their work, but they complement other more broader tools that have been developed by IOM. So for example, if you are a national or local government looking to integrate migration into your work, implementing the 2030 agenda into your voluntary national reviews of the SDGs, for example, then the migration and 2030 agenda guide for practitioners is your guide. And it even includes a booklet mapping specific migration like it is to SDG targets. And I think a few of my colleagues will be able to just put some of these links in the chat as I'm talking here. If you're working on implementing the global compact for safe, orally and regular migration, shouldn't the GCM or you're part of a UN country team and you want to work more closely on migration issues, then we have guidance for national governments and other stakeholders and UNCTs have been developed under the UN network on migration and again, you can find some of these links in the chat box. If you just want to exchange information with other migration and development practitioners or just generally explore this topic further, then the migration for development net or M4D net as we like to call it is a global hub and a community of practice that brings together practitioners and policymakers from all over the world to exchange ideas, develop skills and really consolidate partnerships. This platform includes all the above guidance and more and can act as your one stop shop. These resources and tools we use to support actors to mainstream all kinds of migration and development efforts at every step of the migratory cycle. My last slide here, slide seven, please. I'm turning to the next slide. Now you have the tools, but how do you apply them? And I want to just mention, we actually just finished doing this in Nepal. And going back to Serge's story from Nepal, COVID-19 clearly had a big impact, particularly on returning migrants. To help measure this impact, technical assistance under a project was provided to assess the COVID-19 impact on returning migrant workers and their communities in Nepal. So the assessment was conducted largely through telephone interviews and surveys across two provinces reaching about 800 respondents. The technical assistance also organized a national consultation with Nepalese parliamentarians on integrating migration into the country's COVID-19 sociogenic response and recovery plans. Moreover, the technical assistance provided guidance to the British council on how to adapt their vocational training activities to the needs, the specific needs of returning migrants in Nepal and commission the capturing of stories of returned migrants and their families and communities. It also helped to enable development partners to understand the COVID-19 impact on returning migrants and their communities in Nepal and develop more migrant sensitive COVID-19 response and recovery interventions. So in line with these efforts, IOM has built up its extensive operational work, building upon that extensive operational work, expertise and global research on good practice and lesson learned to identify approaches and guidance for stakeholders providing reintegration assistance as called for in objective 21 in the GCN. Let me stop there. I'm pleased now to hand the floor over to my colleague, Joy Paoni who will focus in on IOM specific area of expertise supporting returning migrants for sustainable reintegration. A particularly important type of human ability that we can harness to recover better from COVID-19 and hopefully get ourselves back on track for achieving the sustainable development goals and sustainable development. Joy, over to you. Thank you. Great, thanks a lot, Thomas and thanks for the introduction as well. So as Thomas mentioned, we'll now really look more specifically at one area of migration, which is reintegration. And it's an area that's sometimes oversimplified or misunderstood because after all, once migrants return back to their countries of origin, they're no longer migrants. They're citizens of the country and they have the same rights as the rest of the population. But really this process of re-adaptation is not an easy one, especially for migrants who return to their countries of origin because they are unable or unwilling to remain in the host or transit country. So it could be for many reasons. They might find themselves in an irregular situation. Their asylum claim has been refused. They find various obstacles and integrating in the host country. They may be stranded in a transit country. Their family situation back home requires them to return. And as we've seen also recently with the COVID pandemic, they might have to return because of that. So in these cases, migrants can be assisted to return to the country of origin. And there's also cases where they're forced to return. But once they're back, there are a huge number of factors that can affect the reintegration process. So the returning, as mentioned by Thomas, might have accumulated debt for their migration journey that they might need to repay when they return. They might have children who were born in the host country and they don't speak the language in the country of origin. The family and the community may perceive the returning negatively as a failure. The local job market and access to services which could have been a reason why the migrants migrated in the first place, it can still be a challenge. So there's many other factors, all of which really need to be tackled if we want to achieve sustainable reintegration. So that's easier said than done. So how do we go about it? So on the next slide is first to have a common understanding of what we want to achieve. So in 2017, IOM developed a definition for sustainable reintegration, which you see on the slide. So it is that reintegration can be considered sustainable when returnees have reached levels of economic self-sufficiency, social stability within their communities and psychosocial wellbeing that allow them to cope with migration or re-migration drivers. Having achieved sustainable reintegration, returnees are able to make further migration decisions a matter of choice rather than necessity. So I want to highlight three main points that comes out of this definition. First, the reintegration is multifaceted, a multifaceted phenomenon that refers to three dimensions, economic self-sufficiency, social stability and psychosocial wellbeing. It concerns returnees, but also communities to which they return. And it's linked with structural factors in the external environment. Secondly, as we see, re-migration doesn't necessarily imply a lack of sustainability. What counts is whether new migration happens as a matter of choice or not. And this is also aligned with the global compact on migration wording. And thirdly, we see in the definition that the factors affecting reintegration are not dissimilar to those that pushed migrants to leave in the first place. So next slide. So based on the definition, IOM developed an integrated approach to reintegration, recognizing that achieving sustainable reintegration requires a holistic and a needs-based approach. So the chart that you see here recaps a bit this approach. So it takes into consideration the various factors impacting reintegration, as we've seen the economic, social, and psychosocial dimensions. And it's across different levels, individual, community, and structural. So as you can see, it needs to be supported by strong evidence-based with monitoring evaluation and learning surrounding all of this. Clearly, this isn't an approach that can be implemented by one organization or one agency alone. It requires strong collaboration and partnership across many different sectors and at all levels, working with local actors and national level in the countries of origin and between countries of origin and host countries. It also needs to be situated within a wider migration management strategy. So this is the framework. So how do we do this in practice? We go to the next slide. So IOM has been implementing return and reintegration programs for over 40 years. So based on this experience gained in 2019, we published a reintegration handbook which aims to provide practical guidance on design, implementation, and monitoring of this integrated approach to reintegration. So it's available for all reintegration practitioners in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic. And similarly to the tools that Thomas presented, there's an e-course that accompanies it and a training curriculum linked to it. And so far we've been able to train over 1,000 participants in these last three years using the curriculum. So what we're seeing now after a few years of having this approach, of having the practical guidance, different projects in trying to implement this approach, we're seeing that this definition to sustainable reintegration and the integrated approach to reintegration is increasingly recognized as a basis for reintegration programming and it's being adopted in several countries including the governments of Bangladesh, Senegal, Ethiopia, for example. We also have another tool on the next slide with the EU IOM Knowledge Management Hub and it has a dedicated return and reintegration platform. So you should see the link coming up in the chat now. So this platform brings together close to 1,000 members through a community of practice where it organizes regular webinars quite similar to this one on specific topics related to return and reintegration. And there's a large repository of resources. The Knowledge Management Hub also creates knowledge through a research fund. For example, we're right now undertaking a research on debt and reintegration and also on health and reintegration outcomes. We also produce good practice fact sheets, knowledge bytes to analyze data that we collect for our monitoring and evaluation activities. And there's also a capacity building component using the training curriculum on reintegration that I just mentioned. We've also developed a monitoring and evaluation framework and surveys and tools specifically for M&E for return and reintegration. And as well a training curriculum on this. So all this is available on the return and reintegration platform. So before I close, if we go to the next slide, I want to go back to the original title of our session today. How can an integrated approach to reintegration accelerate the 2030 agenda? So maybe one thing to highlight before we respond to this is that historically, when we look at return and reintegration policies, they tended to be a bit disconnected from development processes and priorities. Reintegration assistance was traditionally provided in the framework of assisted voluntary return and reintegration programs that are funded by home affairs actors coming from ministries of interior. So these programs were not really originally conceived as a tool to generate development in countries of origin, but more as a migration management instrument to facilitate a humane and dignified return of migrants who were unable or willing to remain in the host countries. But what we've seen over the last years is really an important shift, looking at reintegration more for a development angle with increasing recognition that reintegration can to an extent impact sustainable development and of course vice versa. So reintegration and development experts and practitioners are increasingly asserting the need to work in the area of reintegration. And this is a shift that has allowed us to conceptualize and start operationalizing the integrated approach to reintegration with this much stronger focus on development. So as you might have understood, all this joint effort to work towards an integrated approach to reintegration really helps to maximize the sustainable development potential of reintegration. And at the same time, we can build on development interventions to foster sustainable reintegration. Within the agenda 2030, we see a lot of interlinguages with different targets, target 10.2, for example, to empower and promote the social economic political inclusion of all respective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, economic status, target 17.7, target 17.9, just as a few examples. And of course, reintegration features prominently in the global compact on migration, specifically in objective 21. If we look more specifically at the three levels of intervention of the integrated approach to reintegration at the structural level, this can be done by ensuring that reintegration support is anchored in local development policies. And we've been seeing this happening more and more in different countries. At the community level, we can aim to address needs, vulnerabilities and concerns of communities as a whole, including returnees. And at individual level, we want to support returnees to contribute to the sustainable development of their area of origin. So if you want more detail on this, the Knowledge Management Hub has published a paper specifically looking at these interlinkages between sustainable development and reintegration programs. And we'll also share a link to that paper in the chat. So that's all that I wanted to present for now. Happy to take questions and discussions. Thanks. Thank you so much, Joanne, for your presentation and for your really powerful story. And really, the story of Sergio really struck me because I suppose we all kind of relate to the vulnerabilities of migrants. We're all very aware of the difficulties that migrants face across the world. But I suppose one thing we don't quite consider as much is what happens when they do go back home. The stress, the abilities to find access to jobs, the health services, just the psychological burden of some, I feel that they have failed in their objectives while they are away. This is something that is definitely important and mainstreaming and reintegration should be really important towards the achievement of the SG's, especially for the leave no one behind task or at all. But one of the first questions that comes to my mind is a political one, development which one? I'm just wondering, who is responsible for reintegration? Who is probably responsible for reintegration? Is it the whole school? Is it the countries they turn from or is it the countries of origin that they actually left in terms of resources, in terms of development planning? How does it usually play out in reality? Thanks Joshua, that's a really good question and it's something that's been shifting. As I said before, historically let's say it was very much placed in the host country. So we had many programs for example that were financed from Europe for example and the reintegration component is in addition to the return piece. And what we've been seeing more and more is countries of origin taking up the responsibility of their own nationals once they return and really working together with IOM, together with the host countries as well to create referral mechanisms, to pick and place systems in the country of origin. And we see that in that way the reintegration work is a lot more localized. It's something that responds really to the needs in the countries of origin but it's a huge effort. It's not something that happens immediately. So I would say the responsibility is a bit on everyone. So on the country of origin to of course to return to welcome back and to have the systems in place for the returnees but with the assistance of the host countries and there's a lot of coordination, a lot of cooperation that is needed at the international level as well. Could I just build on that a little bit to make Joyce answer the question really well? Just to say what I'm seeing in the working so close with the European Union is they have, it's part of the Global Europe program for the next five years or so, something that they're focusing called the whole of root approach. So really as Joyce saying as well, looking at the origin, transit countries, destination countries, so it really is everyone trying to integrate that together. And then just through our mainstream migration program, as I mentioned, we're going into some of these different EU delegations and really working with them to really mainstream that migration into the priority development sectors that they're working on and that they want to support obviously in coordination and collaboration with the country governments and really taking that whole of government approach. So just another way in terms of how we're looking at this and working with our partners on it over. Thank you very much. Here in IPPN talk a lot about developing new tools for integrated policy analysis and one of the things that we've realized over the past six Knowledge Cafe webinars that many of these tools actually do exist. They're out there. I was really keen to hear about the toolkit that you mentioned for stakeholder analysis. For example, I just finished the exercise on analyzing some one country analysis of some countries that the clear view of missing a stakeholder analysis is just an important part of it that was missed. But my thinking now, my question for you now is some of the tools you mentioned and presented in your presentation earlier. How can these be integrated or how can these be used to sort of mainstream migration and other domains, let's say the work of environmental climate change? How do you use these? So how can they be sort of be used in other areas? Thanks, Joshua. Let me maybe I'll take that one first. So maybe I'll dive a bit more into and I appreciate you mentioned the stakeholder analysis tool, but another one, we have sort of 10 or 11 tools in our toolkits. But let me dive more into the situation analysis tool. So to kind of, and I think it answers your question as well on the stakeholder tool. So the tools we use, the particular situation analysis tool we use to gather information and evidence to inform really a more nuanced understanding of again, those connections between migration, for example, and the particular sector you're working on, maybe it's private sector development trade and health and just really looking on that in the country or region of focus. So this tool can be used at the start of the programming phase. And again, our tools are applied at the different European Commission programming phases where you can analyze the migration situation, how it intersects with the priority development sector or in the design phase. And as much as I mentioned the EC European Commission and intervention cycle, I think it fits with a lot of different project development cycles used by many different development practitioners. So let me just take maybe a bit more of a specific case study. From a migration and trade perspective, again, using the situation analysis tool, one of our toolkits really looked at the mobile population of small scale cross-border traders who typically deal in low volume, low value food, essential goods, kind of household items for sale in local markets between within border zones. So they frequently are crossing these border points, these small scale cross-border traders. To give you an idea of scale, the IMF estimated that small scale cross-border trade was worth half a billion dollars to Uganda alone. And it's worth billions more if you aggregate this to all African union members. So from a trade integration perspective, UNTAD who was one of our partners on this toolkit, private sector development trade is really working with the African continental free trade area implementing the protocol on free movement in persons, excuse me, with a focus on small scale cross-border traders. However, through their research, both IOM and UNTAD are recognizing that beyond the economic impact of this mobile population, we're really seeing that these traders are facing heightened vulnerabilities, including bribery and corruption, harassment and abuse of border control points, which pushes them towards illegal border crossing points. And again, these issues have been more exacerbated as well to COVID-19. So again, the tools within our toolkits with the different UN partners are really trying to get at some of the nuances of these issues and really pushing development practitioners to think about these things as they're developing their projects, policies or program interventions. Let me stop there, thanks. Thank you very much. And for the rest of the participants, we are, you know, if you have any questions, please feel free to type our books in the chat box or raise your hand if you wanted to jump in and make an intervention. In the context of the mainstream migration into international cooperation development project pilot that tested these mainstream migration approaches and practice across a number of countries, what are some of the key considerations that you might consider when implementing and adapting these efforts to the unique development migration context? Okay, thanks again. I think that's aimed at me. So as I mentioned in some of my comments, our project, we recognize the importance of, again, building these resources and tools with our partners, the European Commission and the different UN agency, but how we then take these knowledge products and get out into the field and really test these mainstream migration toolkits in a pilot type situation. So we spent a few years piloting the mainstream migration work in Ecuador and Nepal and Madagascar. And we first began by really obviously talking to the host country, the different government ministries, bringing in the EU delegations in these countries and other development stakeholders, thinking about that whole government approach and whole society approach to really conduct country-specific assessments that would help inform these pilots and really the future tactical assistance that we did. So I think I mentioned in Nepal, we looked at mainstream migration in terms of returning and the attorneys after COVID-19 and really focusing on education and rural development sectors in Nepal. In Madagascar, we explored really looking at the rural and urban development sector. And in Ecuador, as I mentioned, really looking at that urban development and we really worked quite closely with a number of local stakeholders. So I think in one particular example, I want to mention perhaps from Kenya, one of the more recent pilots that we're working on and we're just finishing there, it's really working with the FAO in Kenya to roll out a pilot of our mainstream migration into rural development in Kenya with the FAO, the different government partners and the EU delegation. And just for me, because I've been more involved in this pilot particularly, it's been fascinating to like really learn about how migrants and the migration dynamic is playing out. And so often we think about it just at the national level. I think going back to what you're mentioning about a number of different stakeholders and recognizing that, it's fascinating to see how migration, particularly in the Kenyan context, is playing out at the local county and community levels. And so the Kenyan stakeholders that I was speaking to and listened with, they really spoke passionately with the topic of decentralization. And I think that's really important when we look at migration and associated policies, that it's not just being set up at a national level, that when we're developing these urban development plans at county and city levels, we really look at what migration impacts they have there too. And for IOM, where we really draw on the UN network on migration, you know, a number of countries also have the UN network on migration. So what we were trying to do in Kenya where we have the UN network on migration, which brings together a number of different stakeholders, UN agencies, how do we then leverage the UN network on migration to further make these interesting connections between national local level. So really kind of that vertical policy element. And again, I've mentioned we have nine different sectors. So even though we worked on rural development in Kenya with the FAO, clearly we had a lot of other issues on looking at environment and climate change and urban development as well. So how do we start looking at the synergies between the different toolkits instead of just a deep dive on one section? Because we know the integrated solutions is a part of the overlooking at and tackling some of the challenges. Let me stop there. Thanks very much. In the context of supporting or providing IOMs provision of support at the country level, are you able to provide this support even when you don't have country presence or how are you able to take advantage of the UN system's country presence to provide support to countries? Sorry, is that named at me, Joshua? Actually, that was named at Joy. Okay, Parmi, okay. Over to you, Joy. Sure. We, with IOM, we're lucky, I guess, that we do have that presence across many different countries. I mean, even there are some missions that are very small with a couple of people, but that does help us to have that direct contact. And I think when it comes to reintegration, we have, let's say, many years' experience working directly with the returnees individually, welcoming them at the airport when they arrive, providing more of the individual-level assistance and what we've been building up over the last few years when it comes to reintegration, because of course we have a lot of, we have been working on a lot of different levels and different migration areas, but when it comes to reintegration, we've been building up using the direct connection, the direct knowledge of the needs, the skills of the returnees, knowing them quite intimately and bringing that up with other stakeholders in different sectors and within local and national governments. So it's, I guess that's something that we've been able to do because we had that underground presence and working directly with the beneficiaries. So it's translating that then into a larger of how do we then put systems in place and look at the more structural level. So yeah, it's looking at that from that other perspective starting from the ground up. It seems there are, because obviously the stakeholders and the actors in this venture are quite diverse and how do you bring them together? How do you, what platforms are you by? I know you did mention the platform earlier, but how do you ensure you have dialogue with all the actors for reintegration? Are there any virtual platforms that you use or tools do you employ for that? So it depends a little bit to country and it depends on which programs are in place. I think the biggest programs that are in place right now are the EUIOM Joint Initiative programs, which is across most of Africa. And there we, thanks to EU funding, we've been able to set up in many countries standard operating procedures, a committee specifically looking that is multi-sectoral, specifically looking at reintegration, programming and setting all of that up. More broadly, because we have this integrated approach that's common, it does help to have that common approach across different countries. So when we are able to bring stakeholders together through different events, then being able to talk the same language, let's say, starting from that same common point, as I mentioned, knowing what we mean by sustainable development and having this joint approach that helps. And yes, through the Knowledge Management Hub, the Returner Integration Platform, through various capacity-building activities that we also do. And yeah, and more broadly, when we're able to bring stakeholders together through for speaking on migration more generally, then we can do that. Thanks. In support of local development priorities, you mentioned the structure that will ensure integration support, which has to be looked at according to local development priorities. You're able to support below the national, so sub-national entities. Are you able to offer support at the sub-national level in terms of SDG liberalization? This is to Thomas. Yeah, I think, thanks, Joshua. I think as mentioned in my last comments, really looking just again, going back to the clear-cut example of Kenya, to the, when we were working on the rural development pilot there with FAO and the European Union Delegation, we saw just how important, as I mentioned, that decentralized element was to bring in those local government stakeholders. And really bring them to the table so that we could have that conversation. And I mentioned the UN network on migration, but I think another important point to mention as well as these different UN country teams. And one of the things UN country teams do that I think is so important to the development of a country is work on these UN, United Nations, sustainable development cooperation frameworks, which really are sort of the guiding document over the next three or four years for that country of where development priorities are. As a UN system, obviously in close collaboration with the governments and so other stakeholders, I mentioned the EU that I'm working with and our teams working with here are obviously building their interventions off of that as well. And what we've done in our migration and sustainable development team is really try to develop a toolkit to support IOM offices to make sure that we can integrate migration elements into those cooperation frameworks. And not just migration, but the elements of migration that Joy's been talking about as well, the return and the return ease situation, because a lot of times people think about migration, it's very much just, okay, labor migration, where there's no, it's also the return ease piece, the impact on communities, bringing all that into the cooperation framework and making sure all those lenses are factored in and considered is so important as well. So we really try to make sure that that's built into the UNCT through tools on integrating migration into these cooperation frameworks and common country analysis as led by the UN team there. Over. I think you're on mute, Joshua. Sorry, thanks. I was just saying, in the case of, obviously there are different types of migrants returning for various reasons. There's some who are highly skilled, whose return could be a great contribution to their countries, you know, finance, healthcare, education, technology. How receptive are countries that you work with in dealing or in, in other words, I gave more receptive to working with returnees who are of a higher, who have maybe higher educational attainment or higher financial ability, capability than people who are less skilled and, you know, that might require a little more effort in support, our government's a little more hesitant to engage in support of the migrants or integrate migrants who have found to offer than those who might be able to require more assistance. Yes, I can go first. Maybe Thomas, you can compliment. Yeah, I think it is a different approach depending on the, let's say when we're talking about highly skilled migrants, it's more thinking about how they can invest in the country of origin, what they can bring. So it's much more, let's say a positive perspective with the return and reintegration, with the integrated approach to reintegration, we're looking more migrants, as I mentioned, that are unable or willing to return to the countries of origin. So what we're also trying to look at is more that link with, for example, the diaspora who is abroad and how can they also contribute to the reintegration of returnees and to the local development in their communities of origin. So creating that link again, it's when we're able to work jointly and work together and see all the different ways that everything can kind of fits in in the end. I think that's the key to be able to do that. But it does, yeah, there are very different approaches and it does require a different kind of way of understanding it. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. I was just going to just add that I think just essentially it's about making sure that every migrant, no matter their situation of vulnerability or not, that they have a seat at the table when it comes to migration governance processes in the country, that they're there. And those processes don't just have to be UN processes or EU processes, but even decentralized community processes, post-conflict, for example. I remember when I was working in Iraq where we would bring private employers together to talk about how we can improve the linkages between the local labor market and the vocational training skills that were happening in Kurdistan and making sure that migrants' voices are involved in that. So all those different migration governance processes, making sure they have a voice is something where we obviously need to keep advocating for and pushing and making sure that that's part of it, that no one is left behind, so to speak, or... Thank you very much. I understand that we have a question from the chat. Is there a specific SG that IOM is currently targeting most? I mean, I think I don't want to speak for you Joy, but I think in IOM it's obviously 10.7 and SG10, but to my colleague Audrey's point there in the chat as well, when it comes to migration, we see ourselves in all the different SDGs. You can link migration to every single SDG, but a lot of people do under the 10.7. And I've spent a lot of time working on reminces as well. This 10.3 lowering the transaction costs reminces, we know that's critical for migrants as well. So honestly, migration is really integrated across all the 17 SDGs. Thanks. Well, that's a really important point to note. And since migration is so cross-cut, how do you, as part of your work, do you support in terms of data collection in these four countries? I mean, it's clearly that many, if you're in many developing countries are very interested in the abilities of their diaspora to contribute to this very sustainable financing. We've seen how the Ethiopian government has developed a diaspora trust fund to have a more holistic and systemic view of the contributions of diaspora in terms of not just fines, but also technology and skill set. So it's data collection, something that we put in some resources in. And also I've had any requests for support in the final processes for countries. I'll go first. I mean, that's absolutely crucial, obviously data to how we're driving evidence-based approaches to our work. I mean, for example, when we were in Nepal, just to be able to do a survey across two different provinces there with 800 respondents and really bring that information what attorneys were telling us in terms of needs and livelihoods and be able to have that research available to present to government and not just government, I mentioned the British council as well. Obviously you can really inform the success of your interventions and the ability to make sure that we can actually address those needs. So data absolutely critical to IOM. One of our biggest data points is the displacement tracking matrix I mean, we're using that in many, many different places right now. People are aware of the Ukraine prices that's going on right now. DTM is super present, obviously tracking information on the ground related to Ukraine but all over the world as well. So data and IOM, obviously it's hand in hand. Let me stop there and then do I have anything else that on that? Thanks. It's just to add on the return integration specifically as I mentioned, we developed monitoring and evaluation framework with specific surveys looking at the different phases of return than reintegration and being able to collect the data through the programs that are implemented. But I would say not just collect the data but also being able to analyze it and to draw lessons learned and to continue improving the programming is crucial and that's what we are trying to do is not only the Knowledge Management Hub doing this there are a lot of different research initiatives specifically focusing on return reintegration but being able to bring that up and to use the data collected and changing, turning that into policy recommendations programming recommendations I think is a key part of the work that we have to jointly do to be able to reach this integrated approach to reintegration and more broadly, the 2030 agenda. Yeah. Just like we also in IOM have our global migration data analysis center which is doing some really, really interesting work as well and I would suggest to practitioners on the call to have a look at some of the work they're doing. I mean, one that appeals to me is because I've been working in North Africa and Europe as well as the Missing Migrants Project some fascinating work in terms of the number of migrants missing in the Mediterranean and we see in the news about boats and capsizing and migrants drowning there and often over the last number of years has been a forgotten issue. So one of the problems they have is the Missing Migrants Project really trying to bring light to these issues making sure that it doesn't leave a national attention and really getting good data on it and certainly not just doing it as IOM but also in partnership with other really fascinating great NGOs that are really wanting to capture data and make sure that it's a part of the solutions as well. So the Global Migration Data Analysis Center for IOM is certainly one of our key partners too. Thanks. Well, thank you very much. We have one more question from Nadine Bihar who notes the interconnected and as a migration agenda and the question is how do you see that in your programs? Any particular output that? I can go first. So on migration and gender, what we, well, on reintegration and gender, what we see with those that are assisted to return, they're the large majority are actually male returnees. It's, I get, I think usually around 70, 80 percent. In, it depends, you know, it depends on the different regions but mostly it's male returnees. So the female returnees, it tends to be a little bit, yeah, hidden, I guess, but we did actually research on gender and reintegration outcomes, which I think, yes, I see that Francesco has just posted it. And we see that indeed there are additional kind of challenges that they have to overcome as women often when they're reintegrating. I'm not sure we have a lot of time to go into it but I encourage you to look at the research about that. But I think more widely maybe Thomas can add to it. No, I think that's great, Joya. I think what you've added is it's been passed out. So I don't have any more to add, thanks. Well, thank you very much. We have just about a minute left. So I'm not sure if anybody else has a question we'd like to take the floor. But in absence of that, I would want to thank you, Joya, and Thomas, for this, for your time and wonderful presentation. And I mentioned earlier, this recording will be made available on the IPPM page on the Slack view but we also invite you all to join the network and to check out our page on sdgemeration.undp.org slash ippn as well as sparkblue.org where you can sign up to receive updates about the IPN and future events. But this conversation can keep this going on Sparkblue. You could share comments or if you have any resources to share or if you want to suggest another webinar that could be of interest to us practitioners. And we thank you very much and we look forward to having you again soon. Thank you. Thanks, Joshua. Thanks, Joy. Thank you, everyone. It was a pleasure. Goodbye. Thank you. Thank you very much. We are happy to hear from all of you. Thank you very much.