ECE/ Eurostat working session on international migration statistics 14- 16 April 2010, Geneva

1. International Migration Statistics in ESCWA region: the challenges of data quality Fathia AbdelFadil UNESCWA-SD ECE/Eurostat working session on international migration statistics 14- 16 April 2010, Geneva

2. Contents: • Characteristics of international migration in Arab region. • Regional Trends. • MENA migrants to EU. • Data quality challenges. • Future cooperation.

3. Main Characteristics: • Before 1990s the trend from Arab Mashreq countries was towards Gulf Cooperation Council GCC; • In the 1980s, migration to GCC from Arab countries registered one third of the total migrants; • After 1990s, Arab labour to GCC diminished and replaced by Asians and Europeans; • After 2nd Gulf war, forced reverse migrants recorded a significant number ( 2 million workers)

4. Maghreb countries recorded significant numbers towards European countries, particularly to France, Germany , Italy, Spain; • Additionally, Maghreb countries migrate to Australia, Canada and USA; • Increase of forced migration in Arab countries as a result of wars and conflict • Arab Maghreb countries became transit stations for Central and West Africa migrants to EU countries

5. - Emergence of Illegal and trafficking migration in some of Arab countries; • Increase of Arab Women migrants as part of a family or as individuals; • In 2008, remittances inflows for Arab countries registered $ 35.2 billions, outflows $ 32.5 billions.

8. Regional Trends: Arab oil countries receive incoming manpower due to insufficient national labour; Non- oil countries send migrants mainlydue to difficulties in securing appropriate job opportunities

9. Sending / receiving countries- mainly Arab Mashreq and Arab Maghreb Arab countries Receiving countries- mainly GCC

10. Economic Social Push/ pull migration factors Political Natural disasters

11. Source: Eurostat database

12. Statistics for 2002-2007 show: • MENA migration to the 12 selected EU countries were 75 to 80 % of the total number of migrants to Europe, Canada and USA; • The most targeted EU countries are Germany, Italy, UK and Sweden;

13. Migrants from Arab countries residing in Europe (selected countries) Source: Eurostat database

14. Migration trends from Arab countries to EU: • A substantive number of migrants from Morocco targeted Spain (range between 41,000 to 72,000 during the years 2002-2007) • Recently Iraqi migrants to Sweden increased substantially (range between 10,000 to 13,000 in 2006 & 2007), • Only Saudi nationals have significant numbers of migrants in UK.

15. Data availability on outflows from MENA countries to EU: - National data are very poor, inconsistent, suffer from unreliability and irregularity; • Data from other sources are not accessible for some sources , • Differences exist between data produced and disseminated by countries and those by international agencies.

16. Challenges of data quality: The Global context: A growing need for good quality on migration data. ESCWA region challenges: Difficulties to meet the national, regional and global need.

17. This could be due to: - The deference between concepts and definitions used; • Lack of National institutional arrangement’: deficiency of close coordination between national institutions deal with international migration/ involved in migration data compilation; • Absence of proper data collection systems: No single source of statistics;- no statistical framework for data collection and data harmonization.

18. ESCWA recent efforts: • Organization of a regional workshop, July 2009, in coordination with ALO, UNPOP and Medstat II; • Major output of the WS is a training kit on compilation of international migration that contains simple, direct and clear guidelines with a view to assist national compilers to collect data from various sources.

19. Future Cooperation to improve data quality: • Looking forward to strengthening cooperation to exchanging data between countries and organizations, including lateral data exchange; • Enhancing transparency between countries and agencies. • Promoting Regional Consultative Process (RCP) on international migration;

20. Thank you