INSTRAW - Interview

May 2006

« Receiving countries should rely more upon women migrants if they wish to introduce changes in their integration policies »

Interview with Ms.Ndioro Ndiaye, Deputy Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM)

One out of two migrant is a woman. Increasingly present and increasingly visible, women who live and work away from their countries of origin send billions of dollars to their relatives - often more frequently than men.

Can this money sent back to Africa, Asia and Latin America serve as a sustainable development tool for the entire population? Can migrant women become investors in their countries of origin?

Ms. Ndioro Ndiaye explains how the face of migration - as well as that of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) - is becoming increasingly feminized.

Let’s talk about gender with… Ndioro Ndiaye ♀ What has been your greatest victory? I have never asked myself if the progress that I have achieved for myself, for my family or for my community could be considered a victory. It’s natural. But one of my victories is without doubt, my family and my children. ♀ Your greatest difficulty? Working with men most of the time and forgetting that I am a woman. ♀ Your greatest complaint? The feeling of insecurity in my ideas; I have to work in order to spread and share the ideas that I defend. ♀ Your greatest hope? That women migrant will play more active roles in their receiving countries as well as in their countries of origin.

At the international level, migration flows are becoming increasingly feminized. Does this only mean that more women are leaving their country of origin, or also that they are contributing more to the financial development of their countries of origin?

There are between 175 and 180 million migrants in the world, according to the last reports of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). It is generally understood that women make up half of these migrants. This is something new in the migration phenomenon. For a long time men were believed to be the ones leaving to look for work and that, once they were established, women would join them to educate the children and assume their reproductive responsibilities. Today, migration flows tend to follow another pattern: women migrants are more present and more visible than before in terms of the magnitude of their movement and because they are able to move more freely and independently.

In addition, the status that women acquire after migrating has created added value in the field of migration management. If women migrants are educated, they contribute to their receiving countries as well as their countries of origin. If they are not educated, they run the risk of falling into the net of traffickers. This is the phenomenon called human trafficking which all of us must fight against.
It cannot be over-emphasized that receiving countries should rely more on women migrants if they want to introduce changes in their integration policies. In the field of education for example, women play an essential role and can therefore be an appropriate vehicle for change in receiving countries.

Migrant persons are still frequently depicted as asexual beings and migration as a gender-neutral movement. To the contrary, the IOM and INSTRAW highlight the importance of taking into account the differences between the men and women who migrate. Which specific actions do you undertake on behalf of women?

IOM has long been active in the fight to make the contribution of women migrants visible. Our working group on the thematic of gender is composed of more than 80 gender « focal points » spread throughout the world. In almost all our offices there is a specific person in charge of the gender policy in IOM’s programs - for those developed in the field as well as for those planned at headquarters.

In the field, there are differing cases and therefore several levels of intervention used depending on the women encountered in each context. We are generally asked to work in conflict and post-conflict situations. In the camps of refugees and displaced people, we intervene in collaboration with other United Nations agencies such as the High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR), UNICEF, or the World Health Organization (WHO) so that women can receive the required attention. Information campaigns are developed so that women can acquire more knowledge. They are given tools and equipment so that they can promote health correctly and improve their environment.

In the case of professional women who leave their home countries on their own, they demand access to decent work and proper payment, and to be able to live on their salary in their host country. One of the other requests from the majority of professional women migrants is to have the possibility of contributing to the development of their host countries, either by sending money to help the family left behind, or as investors with local associates to create employment and profit-generating activities for themselves. These are the new factors, the new requests that have required a new approach from IOM.

In the recent years remittances sent by migrants worldwide have constantly increased. In some countries like the Philippines, family members often encourage women rather than men to migrate because women tend to send remittance money more frequently. Is this a local phenomenon or a global tendency?

The fact that women send more money to their countries of origin more regularly is a general tendency. Often, the funds sent by women on one sole occasion may be less significant than those sent by men. However, since women send remittances more frequently, the additional volume tends to make their contributions more substantial.

Concerning the increase in remittances sent by migrants, the IOM is very concerned with what individual States think about it. In February 2006, we organized a conference on remittances sent by migrants originating from less developed countries (LDC) in collaboration with the governments of the LDC and the Secretariat of the United Nations in charge of the LDC.

In Benin, for the first time, experts from the Economy and Finance Ministries, as well as government officials from State departments, met to express their views and to hold discussions with the World Bank (WB), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the African Development Bank, central banks, etc.
As to the controversy regarding the private nature of these funds, IOM fully agrees that remittances cannot be an alternative to development assistance. On the other hand, we want to go further than this comparison. We could find out which synergies can be established within the development assistance that should continue flowing to the LDCs and the financial flows generated by migrants. We could also reflect on how to channel this money through development efforts made by the country of origin , and the ways in which the migrants themselves could be considered as investors, owners, or financers.

There is no doubt that some of the billions of dollars sent each year by migrants to their countries of origin have improved the well-being of certain families. However, how could those remittances become a real sustainable development tool for the whole population?

We have been given concrete examples of this possibility. IOM has observed what has happened in Mexico. During the debates, this country informed us of initiatives such as the « one for three » program. That is, for each dollar remitted to Mexico by a migrant, the Federal State adds a dollar and the local authorities add another one. Together those three dollars are invested in a development program that benefits everyone. The same type of programs exist elsewhere, however it is Mexico’s example that has been the most convincing.

In Guatemala, the IOM representative has helped to initiate an extremely fruitful housing program, whereby migrants were able to contribute to the creation of decent, modern, and beneficial housing for their families by depositing their funds into a system created for that purpose. And this is working very well. These actions can be reproduced elsewhere if migrants know that they can improve the living conditions of the people left behind, even if the money does not exclusively go to their family members.

Interview conducted by Laurent Duvillier.

Long version:
http://www.un-instraw.org/revista/index.php?lang=en&display=interviews&id=1042

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