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 ♀ Your greatest difficulty? Working with men most of the time and forgetting that I am a ♀ Your greatest complaint? The feeling of insecurity in my ideas; I have to work in order to ♀ Your greatest hope? That women migrant will play more active roles in their receiving |
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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