 My name is Eva Ackerman-Borje and I'm the Director of IOM's New Department for Policy and Research. Migration Research and Publications Division, which is responsible for the production of the World Migration Report series and the organizers of this webinar, I should say, is an important part of this new department. And as you may know, the World Migration Report is IOM's flagship publication and the reference report on migration globally. It's IOM's main contribution to strengthen global evidence based on migration and migrants worldwide to support states in policy formulation and review processes and combat disinformation on migration and migrants. The World Migration Report is published every two years and the latest edition, the World Migration Report 2022, was launched last year, 1st of December by our Director General, Antonio Vittorino, at the 112th session of the IOM Council. We organized a first virtual event on the World Migration Report 2022 on 2nd December 2021 with our Deputy Director General for Operations, Mrs. Ogotchi Daniels. The first webinar provided an overview of the report and its digital tools. It was widely attended, reflecting an ever-growing interest for evidence-based information analysis on migration and migrants by an increasingly diversified audience. We have the pleasure this year to organize a series of World Migration Report webinars to respond to the needs and interests of the report's audience. Each webinar will focus on a specific chapter of the World Migration Report, starting with the chapters of Part 1, which provide key data and information on migration and migrants before turning to thematic chapters of Part 2, focusing on complex and emerging migration issues. Together with the different digital tools we have recently developed, such as the World Migration Educators Toolkit, these webinars are an important part of our endeavors to constantly improve the knowledge on migration and migrants globally. It's central to communicate research and analysis beyond the research community to a vast and diversified audience, and I'm very pleased to see attendees online, not only from all over the world, but also from different backgrounds, ranging from government officials to practitioners to private sector actors and researchers of course. Today's webinar will focus on Chapter 2 of the World Migration Report 2022, which provides a global overview of migration and migrants. More specifically, the chapter explores global data and trends on international migrants and international migration flows. It also provides a discussion of particular migrant groups, such as migrant workers, refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons, as well as of international remittances. As one of the core chapters of the World Migration Report, Chapter 2 is updated in each edition in light of new data released by a range of organizations, including IOM's programmatic data on missing migrants, assisted voluntary return, reintegration, resettlement and displacement tracking. And in this 2022 edition, the chapter also explores the interconnections between migration and mobility in light of COVID-19 travel restrictions that have resulted in unprecedented immobility around the world. As one of the most used and cited chapters of the World Migration Report, Chapter 2 highlights how shifts in scale, in direction, demography and frequency can assist us in better understanding how migration is evolving, while also pointing to long-term trends that have been shaped by historical, as well as recent events. The chapter also forms the basis of the World Migration Report Interactive webpage, a dynamic digital platform with data visualizations that allow users to explore and interact with some of the latest migration data and information. And I'm proud to say that in 2021, the interactive webpage was recognized in two international design award competitions. So now, before passing the floor to our speakers, please let me remind you all that the webinar is recorded. In the interest of time, questions will be kept to the Q&A session after the presentations and the remarks. However, please feel free to ask your questions at any time during the webinar by using the chat function. So with that, I'm pleased to pass the floor now to Mary McCauley, who is the editor of the World Migration Report series and the head of the Migration Research and Publications Divisions at IOM. Please, Marie, the floor is yours. Thanks so much, Eva. I'm just going to check and make sure that everybody can see the screen before I put it onto the slideshow. Can you see it okay? Yes, it works, Marie. Fantastic. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. And thanks especially to Amit Ichigo and Diego Irritalde for joining us as discussants. I'm looking forward to hearing from them later. But to start with, we'll just have a quick whizz through an overview of the global trends chapter, which as Eva mentioned is really the core of the report. It is the most cited, the most used, and it provides the big picture every two years on international migration. So I will try and spend about 20 minutes and Eva is kindly going to wave at me or red card me or some orange card me on the way through if I take too long. But I will try and just really offer the highlights because there is the interactive platform, which is a lot more fun than a webinar, but thank you again for joining us for this webinar. And there's also the report itself, which many people go through and use and search for key topics and keywords and so forth and use it in teaching, in their research, in policy briefs and all sorts of different things. So we're endeavoring to meet your needs in terms of how you work on migration around the world. Just to recap, this is not how you do PowerPoint. Obviously there's way too much content here. But this is really important in terms of situating this edition of the World Migration Report within the last 20 plus 22 years, in fact. We just remind ourselves that migration knowledge products and migration research and analysis has been around for a couple of decades at least within IOM. But we have developed and honed and we engage in continuous improvement within our team within the organization and also with our partners to make sure that we are meeting the needs of an increasingly large but also diverse audience in regards to the World Migration Report as IOM's flagship. So it commenced in the year 2000. We publish it every two years, but if you look closely at those covers you've seen it's been a bit higgly-piggly, but we've tried to standardize that and produce a product that is a lot more predictable and rigorous as well. It is a highly collaborative process. We're involving many, many IOM staff from around the world who we greatly appreciate, but also with our external partners who help us with co-authoring, who help us with co-editing, but also importantly with providing expert peer review and we're greatly, really, really deeply appreciative of their time and energy and helping us to produce a strong report. As Eva mentioned, we've won two awards last year, particularly in terms of design and the interactive platform. And we're also, as you can see there, expanding and tailoring different outputs for different audiences, including the Educators Toolkit, Fact Checkers Toolkit, we're currently working on the Policy Officials Toolkit with GSPI and the Graduate Institute here in Geneva. I'm not going to read this out, but I'm just going to highlight, really, the importance of the World Migration Report to contributing to knowledge on migration around the world and really to talk about, I suppose, what our Director General Director General says, IOM's obligation to demystify the complexity and diversity of human mobility, but also our obligation to make sure that we are providing accurate and clear data, information, research and analysis to a growing and highly interested, of course, audience, notwithstanding politicization and misinformation. Here is the report table of contents. It's rather large. We will be looking today just at Chapter 2, a global overview. We're trying to keep the webinars short and keeping them to an hour and we will be having webinars throughout the year, really looking at the various chapters in the World Migration Report, including with discussants and we look forward to your questions a bit later. This one is the core chapter. It's Chapter 2 on migration and migrants and provides a global overview and we update this chapter from edition to edition and have been doing it this way since 2018. So this is the third edition in the Global Reference Report series. Just a quick take on Chapter 1, which is the report overview. We do provide kind of almost like an executive summary in terms of the thematic chapters, but we also look at the very, very big picture around global transformations that are occurring that do deeply affect international migration and displacement. And here I'm talking about the technological, the geopolitical and also increasingly the environmental changes that we are seeing transform, you know, a whole range of different global processes. In this particular edition for the first time we have provided some key migration data at a glance, again in response to readers needs. And we've also really reflected on IOM 70th anniversary. So for those who are interested in the organizational aspects, we do have a short summary in Chapter 1 and then an appendix which really looks at the regional offices around the world and their contributions. Now to get to global trends. I'm not really going to go through this even mentioned it earlier we do look at sort of global data sets to try and situate the latest data research and analysis on international migration. We do look at specific migrant groups but it is important also and you'll see it in text boxes throughout the chapter to situate IOMs programmatic and operational data. It may not be global, it may not have full coverage but it can provide some very interesting highlights and information and analysis in terms of what is changing around the world in regards to migration and its impacts on migrants and on member states and others. This is a static shot of the interactive. It's really just to highlight that we have invested with some key partners on providing a whole range of different types of outputs. This one is the one in 30 so we're really looking here at the international migrant population I won't go to the interactive but this is just to provide you with the web address and to give you a bit of a taster in terms of what the interactive covers. It doesn't cover the entire report but it does cover some of the key outputs especially from the global chapters such as remittances, the COVID-19 restrictions. There is a fantastic Sankey interactive that I use actually on a day to day basis because it shows corridors country to country corridors around the world is very useful. There's a global map. We look at the accumulated corridors as well as one of the thematic chapters which is the step ladder of opportunity. Now some of the key questions international migrants where do they live and you can hear it see here we've looked at data over time 2005 through to 2020 taking snapshots. And you can see that while the international migrant population has increased it's certainly not even in number or proportion around the world. When we look at the six UN regions, we can see that Europe and Asia most definitely have the largest number of international migrants but Asia has recorded the greatest growth over time since the year 2005. Just a reminder, many people on the call and it's lovely to see the names pop up in terms of the participants. Thank you for joining us again. But many people on the call will know that here we're using UN data and the definition of international migrant is not defined by policy category but is defined by being foreign born so you're living in a country in which you were not born. International migrants where do they live and where have they come from really here we're looking at the top 20 this is snapshot data the latest international migrant data again from UN Dessa. And we can see the United States of America continues to be the most significant destination country for international migrants. And then we can also see that Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia Federation, the United Kingdom, so on and so forth, mainly labor migration, family reunification, international students of course, but we can also see some very large destination countries of which are affected by refugee flows such as Turkey, we can see Turkey there is a top destination country around the world and also the Syrian Arab Republic, on the right hand side, as one of the world's top origin countries, again due to cross border displacement in a very very large volume, unfortunately. We've got quite a few displacement countries of course in origin countries they're looking down the list, Afghanistan, Venezuela, and so on. International migrants, where are the largest cumulative country to country corridors now this is snapshot data, but we have to remind ourselves of course that these cumulative corridors. So we could be looking at people who were born in one country but have actually lived for decades in the country of destination and they may even be citizens of that country what we are looking at just a reminder again is that we're looking at people who were born born here. So we can see the Mexico to the United States continues to be the world's largest cumulative country to country corridor but then followed by Syria to Turkey. And again we can see some very large corridors there that are due to displacement including Afghanistan, of course to the Islamic Republic of Iran. There's a real mix here of labor migration of a whole range of different policy categories of family reunification of displacement across borders and so on. Many of you will have come across in the in the in the so-called literature in policy discussions, the issue around the feminization of migration but as we look at the data over time. So we can see that there has been significant growth in the number of female international migrants. However, the growth has not been as significant as the growth in male migrants. It calls into questions. It calls into question the discussion around the feminization of migration. Why are we seeing these changes occur in the last 20 years in terms of gender splits the sex disaggregation shows us very clearly that there is a growing in gender as it relates to international migrants. Some of the reasons relates to the big corridors and the significant differences here when we're looking at this particular output which is from the ILO and it's looking at migrant workers around the world. This is the latest data from the ILO on migrant workers as at 2019 highlighted in the World Migration Report. And we can see here that while some regions have close to gender parity when we look at international migrants disaggregated by sex and here we're talking about Europe, Central Asia, other parts of the Central and Western Asia I should say. But then when we look at other parts of the world we can see quite significant differences and some geographic regions experience highly gendered migration resulting in very large sex differences and of course you can see at the top of the figure there, the Arab states but also Southern Asia for example down towards the bottom has very significant differences. With much higher proportion of males compared to females. We do discuss this in the report of course and there are a range of different reasons including occupations, industries, the conditions in regards to international migration, but also the networks that can affect destination patterns over time. This is a new, unfortunately, fortunately, a new section within the World Migration Report chapter two because of COVID-19 of course we have devoted a fair amount of space within chapter two to look at the impacts of COVID-19. Firstly in regards to travel restrictions and these two graphs that you can see here this pairing. The top is international travel controls those terms, we've got large footnotes of course underneath our graphs but those terms are ones from the Oxford Government Response Tracker so we're just being faithful to their particular concepts and terms and there's certainly some materials that you can read if you're interested in going into that. But the international travel controls at the top and then the restrictions on internal movement between cities and regions at the bottom there and you can see the top one. There are far greater numbers and proportions of international restrictions. This is by number of countries that have restrictions in place and here we're looking at from January 2020 and you can see the very significant. Increase in restrictions in February and March really peaking in April, most in most particularly with the red zone being bands on all regions or total border closures so there was a very strong reaction from states around the world to putting in place. International travel controls. You can see at the bottom similar sorts of dynamics they're not as pronounced and certainly the internal movement restrictions came down much more quickly and have softened over time. There's significant variation in terms of the imposition of travel restrictions by UN region and that is something that we can talk about in the next webinar when we look at the regional dimensions and developments but just to highlight there that there are significant differences. And of course we did see the transition to the health related measures over travel restrictions over time, particularly this is prevalent in rich countries where they have higher vaccination rates and we know of course from the World Health Organization that there has been a real disparity and inequality in terms of vaccination programming around the world and that is reflected also in the nature, the type of the travel restrictions that we have seen evolve over time. This is a rather dramatic graph this is IKO data. The International Civil Aviation Organization and they have really tracked for a very long time 1945 through to 2020, the very significant impacts in terms of air passengers carried globally. I don't think a couple of years ago that any of us would have foreseen a graph like this and output like this. We did see international, sorry total but domestic and international passenger numbers drop from 2019 from 4.5 billion to 1.8 billion around the world. Very significantly affecting of course migrants who were stranded all around the world but also having impacts in regards to health related impacts for people who are stranded migrant workers became much more visible of course as essential workers in societies, and we did see an increase in digitalization which is most obvious or quite sort of prevalent when we're looking at international remittances of course, which is the next slide. Here I'm just highlighting two graphs this is the kind of the before and the after. Many of you may recall that the initial projection by the World Bank was that we would experience a 20% fall in international remittances globally due to COVID-19 for the year 2020 but the actual decline was 2.4% highly uneven of course between countries, but overall globally it was the 2.4% decline. Some of the key factors related to as highlighted earlier the digitalization of financial transfers and also a move from informal channels, which hadn't been collected by the data outputs previously into formal channels out of necessity, it was no longer possible. If we look back towards 2020 and the very significant imposition of travel restrictions for people to be carrying cash home for religious events for family events for cultural events and so forth, just to visit family and friends. So they had to revert especially from mid 2020 when it was clear that the pandemic was going to continue for some time. There was a conversion into digital channels and more formalized channels. We also know that migrants remit in times of crisis we know this from previous. The global financial crisis for example and Merz and SARS impacts in economic terms they call it the counter cyclical effect. But we also know that the maturity of some of the key corridors enabled the established diaspora to be able to remit larger amounts in terms of looking after family and friends. Some countries did experience better economic conditions, due to a range of different factors that were not initially foreseen at the beginning of 2020. Sorry, letting you know that you have three more minutes. Fantastic. Thanks for very much. I appreciate it. There's a lot of material in here on some of the refugee asylum numbers but the table that I thought we would sort of pull out and we can get into a bit of a discussion about this I'm sure later is not so much the headline figures and the trends we do have that in in in the report so I would encourage you to go and have a look. But a new table that we put in just to highlight the very significant disparity between resettlement needs and the resettlement arrivals and we can see over time, looking at UNHCR's data of course, a number of different outputs here but we can see over time that while the resettlement needs have have grown. We are definitely not keeping a pace in terms of the actual resettlement arrivals. And if we look at 2020 34,383 arrivals, there is obviously a COVID-19 impact there as well, due to the travel restrictions. Nevertheless, it's very clear that there is this growing gap a very significant gap emerging ahead it emerged some time ago but it is continuing to become even even larger between needs and resettlement arrivals of refugees. In terms of internal displacement. Again, there's quite a few outputs on internal displacement from IDMC, the internal displacement monitoring centre of course, our colleagues at IDMC and this one I've just highlighted because it shows at the top. Here we're looking at conflict and violence new displacements in 2020. And at the bottom in the blue dots we're looking at internal displacements new in 2020 due to disaster and here disaster can be floods, hurricanes, wildfires and so on. And we can see from this is the very significant difference in geography. 42 countries affected by conflict and violence internal displacement compared to 144 countries affected by internal displacements due to disasters. If you look at the stock, it's almost the reverse, including because often conflict and violence IDPs or internally displaced persons are in protracted situations, whereas displacement due to disaster for a larger proportion can results in return. A disaster has abated and people can return to their homes. This is the interactive we have seen that before I'm not going to highlight that anymore. And you've got the link there and possibly in the chat too. And also just a number of different outputs we are working now on all six UN languages so soon we will be able to finalize translations into Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish. And we're also looking at key chapters being produced. German is actually fully underway, but also in Bengali and Portuguese and receiving calls and inquiries about having other translations done, especially for developing country context because as we know, officials have different outputs in their official languages so we look forward to working with our colleagues and others going forward on that particular aspect. Thank you Eva. Well, well thank you so much to you Mari for this presentation of all the key findings of this chapter and I mean there are so many really interesting aspects in this one that I wonder a lot about is of course this growing gender, gender gap and why it is happening I think that's worth a lot of thought going forward and obviously of course it's, you know, goes without mentioning really the effects of the COVID-19 travel restrictions what would that actually mean now in medium and longer term I think that that's another really interesting question that probably next edition will also of course incorporate. So thank you again Mari. I'm now pleased to introduce our first discussion, discussant of today. It's Ahmed, which will you, who is a professor in both the Department of International Relations, and that's of sociology at coach university, as well as the director of migration, the migration research center miracle. Ahmed was an academic reviewer for the World Migration Report 2022 and is a long standing partner in migration research, including as part of our migration research and publishing high level advice. Many thanks to you Ahmed for being here with us today. We sincerely appreciate your availability to share your expertise and views on the World Migration Report 2022. Please, the floor is yours. Thank you Eva. Thank you Mari for this presentation. It's my pleasure to be a part of this event on the World Migration Report of 2022. I will write my next five minutes into two parts. First, I will make some general, maybe some generic comments highlighting to some of the points in this chapter. In the second part actually I will be more specific and probably a bit original to draw some conclusions out of this chapter. I read the report at this chapter earlier. So let me start by saying that this chapter as it's already said is with this title, it offers the overview of the global overview of the migrants and the migration flows around the world and the offers very valuable insights into the very basic indicators of migration and migrants around the world. When I say basic indicators, we should not underestimate these important figures although they look like simple things but as a migration scholar I know that we are having even for basic concepts like who is migrant, who is not at the long term, short term, temporary, permanent. We have the different definitional problems and the plus of course the data. Always, we know that increasingly we are having more and more data but one of the success of this volume I believe that it benefits out of so many different sources from the UN, DESA, OECD, ILO and the other sources. I know that it's quite difficult to compile the data from different sources, again because of these definition differences in the definitions and the systematically presenting them in a chapter. So I must stress that this main problem of the migration studies, actual definitions and the data questions, so from that perspective actually I really value this chapter and overall the report. This is the first point I'd like to make. Second point, when we look at the figures of course it gives a kind of timeline to us and what happens in recent years also recent decays even in that sense why we are observing that on the different fields, I will put it a bit rising importance and enlarging importance of the migration issues across the world. I mean the different part of the world, different geographies affected by differently but overall we see that there is increasing quantities and also changes emerge throughout the periods. So this was my second point. Third is that the one significant point actually thanks to the IM works of course there are some very, some focuses on on particle issues for instance in this report focusing on this migration corridors because in in scholarly search we focus on but here is presented some some graphs that this is very important so there are some reference to the IM's this program data on the safe migration unsafe migration sorry then the particular statistics on the deaths of the lost life of the migrants I believe this is very important finding because these are the difficult fields to find the data. Plus of course the IDPs and the reference to the again the IM's displacement tracking matrix these are the something news at the not very valuable for the policymakers and the scholars and students in the field of migration so these are my general comments coming to the some specific issues what I did actually when this I got this task also I look at the World Migration Report of 2020 to see a bit difference in the same chapter to compare a bit these two and my I have one significant operation I believe it's significant because I noticed that the two concepts increasingly the frequency of the two concept is we see a kind of increasing from the 2020 to 2022 reports reports one is the concept of mobility actually I find it very valuable of course. As I mentioned, of course, the very significant part of this chapter devoted on the COVID have the COVID environment affected the migration flows at the situation with the migrants. This, the concept of this mobility came through this this in this context, but we know that the from the scholarly research. And the last to the case actually if coming from different disciplines, we are trying to combine this this mobility and migration concepts okay the kind of nexus their linkages continuation. And the, oh, I heard the set that the measuring at the migration is difficult by probably measuring mobility is much more difficult than the measuring migration. This linkage in the context of COVID is very important. But going, I think we should go beyond that in the in the coming years the case probably highly likely we will discuss more and more mobility have to measure the mobility, how mobility at the migration interlink to each other. Different views actually in the in the literature on on on these two concepts, seeing them as a kind of continuation is something also they some scholars see that them as the kind of opposing things. But certainly the second the first significant field and the what I will, what we should do at this in the field, probably also in the coming volumes of the this work migration for really probably we will devote more discussion on the mobility issues have to measure the mobility, the mobility issues, even the beyond the COVID environment what I stress. So I observe, as I said frequency of using this concept in the report, when I compare the 2020 report and 2022. I saw that I think in the 2020 in the same, same chapter only four, four times we had the mobility than the in the in the current one almost close to 40. The first specific thing I can say the second thing is that the, although maybe it's not so visible in this chapter but overall in the whole report and other issues the concept of digitalization or digitalization of migration, digital data, etc. In this chapter also we observe that but throughout the whole report also we observe that. And finally, because the time is passing I like to link these two issues together. Certainly digitalization of the data migration data is important at the actual 2020 to report overall give importance to that. But what I already mentioned that this mobility concept. The digitalization of the migration data gives us a kind of opportunity really how we can measure the mobility is relatively easily. Also linking these two concepts the mobility and digitalization, and how we can use the digitalization, particularly in the in terms of the collecting data even the in terms of the interpretation of the data in the field that linking it to the mobility and digitalization, again will be very significant in coming years and the case the case. These are the two things actually I like to stress out of this chapter. I hope my comments was they were a bit complimentary they already what is said and what is discussed in the chapter. I should stop here thank you very much again for the time. Thank you very much, a professor to you for these very interesting remarks and, and, and your observation I think is very spot on, also on the, the need to focus on this concept of mobility, and unpacking that discussing how to measure and how to use going forward this is very interesting observation so. Thank you very much. Let me now turn to our second discussant of today Diego. Who is the chief director for demography and population statistics at statistics South Africa. He is responsible for the official population estimates published by statistics South Africa, as well as for the thematic analysis and research related to mortality fatality and migration. Many thanks Diego for wanting to be here with us today. Please the ploy is yours. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good morning everybody. It's really my pleasure to be on this call today and to make a few comments on the chapter that has been presented today. So I'd like to start off by maybe picking up on the last point that was made. And that would be around the type of indicators that have been produced in this chapter, I think we start off with looking at migrant stock broken down by certain key characteristics, but also highlighting the importance of mobility, as it is reflected in the official framework that the expert group on migration statistics has put together at the UN SD, and which was approved by the UN Statistic Commission last year. And it is certainly more difficult to measure mobility, and in different parts of the world, different modes of measuring it and on collecting data on mobility will apply in some regions that wouldn't apply elsewhere so it's very much region and context specific. I think the main thing that stands out to me in this report, in this particular chapter is the impact of COVID-19. And I think it's no exaggeration to say that it is probably the one event that has shocked the system in terms of the world where we live in all aspects and needless to say, in the realm of international migration as well. I think those graphs showing the amount of international air travel that had dropped so significantly are the kind of graphs you would show your grandchildren one day and we'll ask what whatever happened there. I recall that in 2020 in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa, we ran a short online surveys and one of the things we were looking at is to see to what extent movement out of the country as well as into the country would have been impacted and it was quite significant, as well as the issue of remittances and to what extent were people intending to remit or whether they simply had no money to remit. I think what stands out in this regard and I think Marie made a reference to that is the resilience of migrant communities that the recovery in remittance rates was certainly a lot faster and a lot sooner than anyone had anticipated. I don't think it's necessary for me to stress the importance of remittances because these are amounts of money which are extremely large amounts of money which go to a person who you are concerned about. And this is not money that is being transferred to a government or to a organization for it to distribute but really a direct transfer to someone who you care about and for whom it will assist in improving their quality of life. So I think that the recovery in remittances and the resilience of migrants around the world is something that stood out for me. I think the section then on the refugees and asylum seekers. I think I think we, we, we often when we think of migration we think of large groups of people moving between one region and the other. But I think it's, it's also really important that we take cognizance of the challenges and of the existence of refugees and asylum seekers. And I mean, we could speak about fake this individuals in this regard as well, which would be, which would add a lot of value to this. And more I think that that as as a research community we ought to focus on, well, but not focus instead of but focus along alongside all of this in innovative data sources so that we are able to respond to critical policy issues. And we are able to respond to them timeously using information, which may not be information that gets collected by a field worker or an administrative system, but is generated by individuals through their mobile phones or or through their internet through Google or something like that. And I think that exploring that domain is extremely useful, as well as exploring migration dynamics from a geospatial perspective. So the second part of my intervention I just want to speak about dissemination because I think it's fantastic that we collect and we produce all of this, but we need to share this information we need to make sure that it gets out there. I'm forever asking Murray the question, how do we ensure that people use this information and make sure that it it reflects in in policies and and programs that countries provide. I think she almost anticipates me asking that question these days. I think that in this regard, we need to pay some special credit to the IOM for its international migration data portal, as well as the interactive page of the World Migration Report because it, it really presents information in a digestible manner and in a manner which were able to and it also provides a lot of additional information that non migration specialists may not be aware of. Then the the expert group on migration statistics, I think a lot of good work has has gone in there as well. Besides the conceptual framework there is work that's been concluded at this point in time around some key indicators that are relevant for migration policy. In the same vein the IDAC the International Data Alliance for Children on the move, which is coordinated by the OECD, the IOM and UNICEF also has has got a few working groups going together. And then the one that's looking at indicators so in a similar way we are looking at what are the key indicators that would be necessary to inform policy with regards to child migration. Finally, I want to perhaps wrap up speaking about some initiatives closer to home. We all we all speak about migration governance being an all of government approach, but I don't think we have we we ever listen to this when it comes to data and research. Many many migration coordinating committees are in existence around the world with regards to policies and how how are certain challenges going to be managed, but never so much with regards to the collection and the analysis of information collected. In South Africa we've established a national migration and urbanization forum, which does exactly this it brings along brings together people from various government entities civil society, even international organizations to share data and findings around migration which will hopefully find resonance in the policy space. I think that a report like this certainly plays a big role in painting a bigger picture of what is it that we are observing at a at a global level. But I finally would like to just close by highlighting some misconceptions about migration from a chapter which was co-authored by myself and Jonathan Crush. We deal specifically with migration in the southern African region, but I think that some of the misconceptions that we try to clarify here certainly play a big role at the global level as well. So there are six of these misconceptions. The first one is that migration has increased exponentially since 1990. And I think that if we look at some of the world migration reports from 2000, we can see that it certainly has increased significantly. But to speak of an exponential growth of migration is not accurate. We must also take into account the definition of migrants which I think was was emphasized, and that what does it include and what does it exclude in order to make that kind of a comment. The second misconception are that countries are either countries of origin or destination. And I think we find around the world that a country can be one of origin and destination as well as a country of transit. So to label countries as one or the other place them into a box is also not not an accurate representation. Thirdly, migrants are arriving from other countries and other regions in overwhelming numbers. This also is an exaggeration. Perhaps it's part of the ongoing rhetoric which is aligned with anti-migrant sentiment that speaks to the stealing of jobs and the existence of all social ills being blamed on on migrant communities. So I think as a research community we have a inalienable responsibility to occupy the space and insert evidence which puts these that corrects these things and places facts into the public space. The fourth misconception is that migrants are dominated by young male migrants and I think the report goes to some length to emphasize the feminization of migration over time. Even if we look at it on a country by country basis, we can see that over time the number of female migrants migrating independently of their male partners has has has increased. And the fifth misconception is that countries are being flooded with an influx of refugees and asylum seekers. And most certainly this this this is not the case. There are certainly times in our history where there have been an increase in in refugees as a result of global conflicts. And these things may occur from time to time but if we if we look at a edit with a long term lens then it certainly does not point to that particular picture. And then finally the last misconception which we want to clarify is that migrants are largely unskilled and work in primary industries and think if we look at any any countries labor migration reports, we can see that there's a wide variety of skills from the highly skilled to the unskilled within the labor migrant population. So I think I've, I've exceeded my five minutes but I think I'll leave it at that and welcome to answer any further questions. Thank you. So very much Diego for for all these important and and and interesting observations that you've made many many things to pick up there with your reflections, not least from my point of view the need to disseminate this information and data I mean basically that's a broad big question but I think that that is important and I know that this is also an issue that Mari and her team are thinking a lot about and you know how to how to speak about data and analysis and evidence to policymakers for instance what you know what is the magic key to to to get through. And I think that that's really important and I think it also speaks to your myth busting those six areas that that that you mentioned so thank you very much for for that we are running a little bit out of time and I don't know how strict we are with time keeping here. If I can indulge our participants for another three, four, five minutes, I'd like to just raise two questions that are quite close to each other and ask the panelists to make like one minute responses each to this if you want and actually the interest from from those who have put questions in in the chat has been quite around digitalization. So the first the first question here that that comes out is when talking about digitalization of migration data, do you think we are at the stage where big data will be featured in the 2024 edition and if so, you know what with the sources and data sets that could be of interest to focus on. That's the first part of the question. Second part is on digitalization and remittances and as we've seen that there has the question is, has there been a significant turn to technical digital solutions used by migrants to send back international remittances during the pandemic. And when we've seen the resilience that you also pointed to Diego about remittances has this been much more than towards digital solutions and do we know anything about what type of solutions were mostly used. So the two questions that unfortunately this is the time we have and I'll send it back to the panelists and maybe if I ask Mari to start off please, Mary. Sure, thanks Eva very much and I'll be very very quick. We do a lot of work on sort of digitalization and digital technology, including as Armit mentioned, throughout the rest of the report so people who are interested in these particular aspects I would encourage you to join future webinars where we look at, you know, especially artificial intelligence but a whole range of different impacts. In regards to the second question I'll answer that one first and international remittances we do look at this in the COVID-19 chapter and there is a thematic chapter that we, we worked on with a number of different researchers and of course international remittances has been a significant issue in regards to COVID-19. And there are some kind of examples of member states for example, putting in place digital channels and really ramping up existing programs to try and get people through more digital channels as well as digital channels. And then there are a number of examples that we highlight by various providers mobile money providers to encourage people to remit, given the difficulties fee free arrangements occurring in different parts of the world of course. And this is to reduce remittance costs in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals the SDGs. And this is where COVID-19 as we talk about in the first chapter the overview chapter has really sort of turbocharged digitalization, which can be for good, and we can see mobile money and service providers reducing costs and making things, not just cheaper and faster but also safer for many migrants around the world so digitalization can be of significant benefit as we saw in terms of international remittances so I would encourage people to have a look at chapter which is the COVID-19 thematic chapter. In regards to digitalization and mobility, we flagged it kind of in the 2020 report but we hadn't, I don't think anybody because it was released at the end of 2019 and end of November, before COVID-19 hit. And we drew on a fantastic paper that Professor Ron Skelton wrote for us for the migration research series on the concepts and the challenges around migration and mobility. So I would encourage people to read that, but we looked at that in much more detail as Ahmed mentioned in regards to current report because of the COVID-19 impacts. And we know that as we saw with some of the large tech providers, we did see mobility data increase for public good for example in regards to managing COVID-19 measures, but there are real challenges because it's not necessarily global data sets it doesn't really include all geographies or all demographics more importantly when we're looking at digital inputs and digital data around mobility, especially from call data records CDRs but also from mobile phone applications and usage where you have history turned on and so forth so we know some of those challenges. It's nothing is perfect. So there's certainly some rich material to work with. But I think the providers, certainly the users of the data are very much aware of the limitations but also in the potential benefits in terms of looking at some of this data for analytical purposes. But we do need to be very conscious is including in relation to the statistical commission, what is feasible and making sure that we're not embedding or systematising global inequalities for those geographies for those people who don't have access or those demographic groups the older groups who don't necessarily use devices use technology in the same way as well so we're not just looking at geography we're also looking at demographic so yes there is certainly an increase in digital data but we have to be very mindful and careful about how it is used and how it is analysed. Thanks. Way over. Sorry. It's 503. That was my short answer. I don't think I want to hear that long answer. I know that. Thank you very much Mari. Can I please turn to Ahmed. Please let us. I mean, time is already over. Again, I will stress that really particularly to measure the mobility to better understand the mobility. I believe that the use of digital data in the coming years and the case will be very important on the visual work on that to particularly putting linkage between mobility and migration issues. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. And now please Diego. Thank you. I think that digital data sources are already quite a strong reality. I think they are they are being collected by numerous entities and I certainly think that this is an opportunity in the migration space. I made a very brief reference to geospatial techniques of measuring migration and mobility. And I think that there's a lot of a lot of opportunity there as well. But as a representative from a national statistics office, I think it's important to acknowledge the limitations of of these big data sources and to establish techniques or methods to normalize them and to use them with responsibility. How do we adjust them in order for them to be representative of a population. I think that's what regards to the digital sources. The regards to digital remittances. I think the key thing here is cost. If digital solutions can provide a cheaper alternative to sending money through the current channels. It will certainly take off in Southern Africa. The remittance costs are probably one of the highest around in the world. And this is why why we see in person transfers as well as informal transfers taking place, which which unfortunately do not feature in the balance of national accounts data which the World Bank draws on. So I think that is opportunity in digital remittances, but I think that overwhelming factor here is what the cost would be. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. And, and with that, we are well well established over time. We have run a little bit over time but I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody for joining this webinar. Thank you for the questions. And thank you very much. Thank you to our two discussions that were with us today, Ahmed and Diego. We very much appreciate your participation. So thank you very much for that. I just want to remind you of a couple of things. If you haven't done it already. Let me invite you to go to chapter two of the World Migration Report and the World Migration Report interactive web page. I think that is really worth your while. And I also want to remind you that we will continue this webinar series and have the next webinar taking place on the 16th of March at four o'clock Central European time. You will be able to see the flyer and the invitation of the registration for this in the chat. So we really hope that you will be able to join us on the 16th of March and please feel free to email the WMR team at the email address that is provided in the chat. So if you have any questions about that. And with that, I would like to say thank you very much again and I wish all of you a nice rest of your day. Bye.