AU member statesbuild capacity on migration governance

Experts on migration from four member states of the African Union (AU) have gathered in Accra for a capacity-building training on effective migration governance.

The UN migration agency, the International Organisation on Migration (IOM), and government officials in charge of migration from Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi and Tanzania are undergoing the training.

The training, which is being organised by the German Development Cooperation (GIZ), in collaboration with the AU, is the first in a series of capacity-building programmes for AU member states to help them effectively regulate migration on the continent.

The ‘Support to the AU on Migration and Displacement’ initiative seeks to enhance the AU's steering capabilities in displacement and migration governance in Africa.

It is also aimed at improving the technical capacity of participants to enable them to, among others, handle and draw up policies on migration issues.

As part of the programme, the AU Commission, with support from the GIZ, had developed a training curriculum on migration governance.

Migration

The Migration Advisor at the Department of Social Affairs at the AU Commission, Mr Peter Mudungwe, said there was a gap between countries’ commitment and their actual technical capacity to handle migration issues.

It is for that reason, he said, that the commission had prioritised the capacity building of member states on migration governance over the next five years to build a robust national and regional institutional mechanism to manage migration.

He said an assessment by the commission in 2018 underscored the need to strengthen national coordinating mechanisms and formulate migration policies, as well as their integration into national or regional development plans.

“Managing the migration of labour, minimising the impact of the brain-drain on national development, issues around human trafficking and the smuggling of refugees are some of the issues member states have to contend with,” he added.

Measures

The Head of the Migration Unit at Ghana’s Ministry of the Interior, Mr Dominic Afriyie Agyemang, said Africa needed to reflect on appropriate measures to stop migration, especially through unapproved routes on the continent to Europe and other countries.

A recent migration report from the European Union (EU), he said, indicated that there was a decrease in the number of crossings of the Mediterranean Sea by Ghanaians from 4,000 in 2017 to 500 in 2018.

In 2018, the EU returned about 850 irregular Ghanaian migrants.

The GIZ Project Manager of Support to the AU on Migration and Displacement, Ms Lydia Both, said the training programme would provide an overview of the migration situation on the continent.

She explained that the workshop was also intended to build the capacity of participants to develop migration policies and stakeholder development analysis on migration.