Strengthening the migration-development nexus in times of COVID-19: why policy coherence matters

The health and socio-economic crises induced by the COVID-19 pandemic have particularly hit hard migrants and their communities. The pandemic has also highlighted the crucial role that migrants play in ensuring the provision of essential services in many economies. While migrants, especially the many working in the informal economy, have often been the first ones to lose their jobs, they are not always entitled to benefit from the social safety nets and other recovery measures in place. This increased vulnerability that migrants, especially women, face is often the result of a lack of coherence across policy areas and between different levels of governance.

As migrants’ countries of origin, transit and destination are struggling on how to respond to the crisis, a new report on Measuring Policy Coherence for Migration and Development provides guidance on designing policy interventions to build forward better. Based on a comparative analysis of 15 countries, the report introduces a user-friendly tool to measure the extent to which public policies and institutional arrangements are coherent with international norms and good practices to minimize the risks and maximize the development gains of migration.