I would like to welcome all on the day three or our first IDM for 2022. And the day three will start with a panel that is called Migration Inclusion in COVID Recovery and Social Protection, a renewed social contract. The moderator is of this distinguished panel, it's Mr. Marius Olivier, Extraordinary Professor of Faculty of Law, University of North West South Africa, Institute of Social Law and Policy. Mr. Marius Olivier, please, the floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. Dijon Kesarovic. Ladies and gentlemen, friends, colleagues, it's my esteem pleasure to welcome you to this session, a title of which has already been announced. We have three distinct panelists, whom I will introduce within a moment. For the moment, for now I could tell you there are the Honorable Sarah Lou Areola from the Philippines, the forward Masukut Watsu from Bristol and Charles Senezi from the African-European Medical and Research Network. And these colleagues are going to address us soon on very important issues. But perhaps by way of an introduction, the background for what we are talking about today, of course, informed largely by the COVID-19 period, the pandemic. And I thought maybe at the beginning just to make a few short remarks on the social protection responses in particular that we have seen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lessons that we can learn as far as that is concerned. But for purposes of this new social contract and the common agenda being highlighted in the Secretary General's response last year. Of course, it leads us from the common agenda through to the SGGs, the Sustainable Development Goals. And in particular also the Global Compact and Migration, our guide there as well as social protection is concerned of course would be Objective 22. And perhaps what we should say as an overall remark is that the crisis, the COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that effective social protection systems are crucial to safeguarding poor and vulnerable people when a crisis leads. Yet the emerging pattern of COVID-19 responses with lockdowns and other types of restrictions shows that countries with weak state-run social assistance lack far behind in shielding livelihoods and the economy from lasting damage. So we have seen a number of interesting and very important state-based social protection responses targeting migrants in this period. We're still in the pandemic and we want to look at some of these responses and also how this has been translated in legal terms. Very briefly, some governments and international institutions have responded by providing social protection measures that are aimed at assisting migrants experiencing the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19. Latin America, for example, and the Caribbean, there we have found a few trains of social text responses that include migrants that have been identified through a joint UNICEF IPC IG and WFP regional study. The response to the pandemic in some countries has reflected, on the other hand, a pre-covered exclusion pattern negatively affecting regular migrants who are already excluded from the national social protection response. Yet, on the other hand, Brazil presents an interesting case of a country with a favorable legal framework that allows social assistance programs to include asylum seekers and refugees. There are also a few interesting examples provided by the IEM of what countries of origin have done in relation to their migrant workers abroad. The Philippines, for example, extended a unilateral one-time grant of $200 to citizens overseas. There are also several cases of countries that have instituted returner relations for its citizens, for example, in Nepal. Thailand and Indonesia also extended monetary and other support to returnees. In Lesotho, for example, we have seen Lesotho government reaching out to its own citizens based in South Africa, at least with a one-time in-kind support given to them. And in the global North, documented migrant workers in formal employment are likely to have access to such insurance and just benefited those migrants during the COVID-19 crisis. Legally speaking, several countries have adjusted their legal frameworks to enable migrants to access social protection in the COVID-19 context. As mentioned, Brazil has a favorable legal framework that allows asylum seekers and refugees to access social assistance programs. And in the South African context, for example, these African government has extended a special social relief and distress grant to capture also refugees, asylum seekers, and certain categories of regularized migrants with temporary, if I could use that word, permanent residents being granted to them. That grant has recently been extended for another year. So our conclusions and recommendations can be summarized as follows, that it's necessary to combine in awakening also of the common agenda, protection measures with enhanced access to health care, universal health care, as well as social work and child protection services. Secondly, to allow migrants to participate in labor market activity, as it provides a lifeline for individuals and households in the wake of border closures. Thirdly, to acknowledge remittance service providers as essential services since they are important for migrant workers to keep assisting their families in the country of origin and ensure that appropriate measures are in place to facilitate remittance transfers. Fourthly, to facilitate inclusion in social protection schemes in countries of origin for citizens who have been working abroad. And the second last instance to design firewalls between social protection immigration services so that the requirements to report undocumented migrants who are in registers of social protection to the immigration department are eliminated. It is important and necessary to align immigration law and policy with social protection provisioning. And finally, beware of unintended consequences, flowing from the formal inclusion of migrant workers in social protection, yet they may be excluded in reality, implying that they may effectively be contributing to the social protection system to which they have no access. And yet it's all for the benefit of nationals. We see some of these examples in the countries currently. So let me then introduce our speakers, our esteemed panel and I'll then one by one as they're going to speak. Our first speaker is the Honorable Sarah Lowe Areola and she is the Undersecretary for migrant workers in the Fais Department of Foreign Affairs in the Philippines. And she will share with us the Philippine government's accomplishments under the Global Compact Migrations, Objective 5 on enhanced availability and flexibility of pathways for regular migration, but also Objective 6 to facilitate fair and ethical recruitment and so forth, conditions that ensure decent work. And in particular, as you will highlight the Kafala Reform Campaign that the Philippines is advocating in the Middle East. Ms. Areola, Honorable Areola has an esteemed career and with accolades, the recognition of the services rendered through the awarding of a grant crossed in 2019 in the Philippines. So we're looking forward to listen to the Honorable Sarah Areola from the Philippines. Thank you. Excellencies and partners in migration, good evening from Manila. We are once again honored to be part of the first session of this year's International Dialogue of Migration. The IOM has been a staunch partner of the Philippines in its efforts to advance and strengthen the country's migration governance. As a GCM champion country, we can overemphasize our support for the implementation of the Global Compact for Migration. The Philippines has consistently been active in its development, negotiations, and adoption. The pandemic did not stop the Philippines to breathe life into the GCM. In fact, the pandemic strengthened our resolve to push for labor mobility in the Middle East, combat trafficking in persons and incorporate the GCM objectives in our domestic legislation. Today, I'm glad to share a groundbreaking achievement for the GCM implementation in the Philippines. The enactment of the Department of Migrant Workers Act, which took effect on February 3rd this year. This is the first law in the world that codifies the progressive realization of the 23 objectives of the GCM. Our existing key offices with migration-related functions are now consolidated into a single streamlined entity serving our migrant workers. The law likewise defines ethical recruitment that enhances the protection of Filipino migrant workers. The law will ensure that labor migration is safe or daily and regular. Labor mobility and human rights are two key principles that the Philippines ban are in its GCM journey. Our labor efforts are rooted in the campaign to reform kafala, a traditional sponsorship system in the Middle East, or in workers are bound to their employers or sponsors during the duration of that contract and are not allowed to transfer to another employer, go home and leave their employers without their sponsor's consent in spite of poor and abusive working conditions. The unintended consequence of kafala can result to slavery and slave-like conditions. Advancing reforms to kafala has since brought unremarkable developments and enabled us to collaborate with countries of destinations such as Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. The GCM's guiding framework this moment in history has now become a movement. The new civil rights movement for migrants that will only get stronger as long as injustice remains. While there are many challenges along the way, political will from both countries of origin and destination is the key in reforming the system. A more milestone of kafala reform is when Bahrain introduced its FlexiVisa system in 2017, allowing its irregular migrant workers to be freelance workers and then to have their pizzas tied to a specific employer. The Philippines beginning in 2018 has invested at least 1.5 million US dollars to purchase FlexiVisa's for 1075 Filipino migrant workers. We are the only country that spent government funds to regularize its migrant workers. This is consistent with objectives five and six of the GCM. Another feat is our continued commitment to pursue trafficking cases of our nationals. One particular case involves two overseas Filipino workers who are survivors of trafficking and sexual exploitation committed by fellow Filipinos and foreign nationals in Bahrain. Both Filipina survivors gave their statements in the Philippines and the suspects were later apprehended, prosecuted, and convicted in Bahrain in 2020. This highlights international cooperation between the Philippines and Bahrain in seeking justice across borders. This vital that a country of origin supports and encourages a country of destination that institutes reforms in order to make that reform succeed. Meanwhile, in Syria, there were reports of trafficked Filipino women who were undocumented workers. They all ran away from their employers and were eventually sheltered at the Philippine Embassy. In 2021, we brought up 110 trafficked Filipinos and assisted them in filing criminal complaints against the traffickers, both in the Philippines and in Syria. In February, 2022, we had an unprecedented win for the first human trafficking case filed before the Damascus Court, making it a landmark judicial victory, awarded by the Syrian court in favor of Filipinos. The Philippine government spent almost $120,000 US dollars to provide the necessary assistance to our distressed overseas Filipinos. At the height of the pandemic, we anchored our COVID-19 response in the five hours, relief, repatriation, recovery, return and reintegration. We facilitated the repatriation of almost 2 million overseas Filipinos. We also mounted over 110 chartered flights to bring our stranded nationals home, no matter the cost. To anticipate many Filipinos who wish to go back to the workforce, the government put up policies for their safe return to work overseas. Among these is establishment of a green-led policy for the crude change of seafarers at ports. The Philippines is the largest number of seafarers serving the world's merchant and cruise streets. You recognize that they are essential workers and their role towards global economic recovery should remain unhappened. Together with other member states, the government further continues its efficient rollout of the vaccination program and issuance of the WHO-agreed International Certificate of Vaccination and Prophylaxis. We issue our citizens a vaccination certificate called VACCERT-PH, which is compliant with international health standards, especially on the recommendations of the WHO Smart Vaccination Certification Working Group issued in September 2021. This is instrumental for us in jump-starting mobility which has been affected by the pandemic the most. Colleagues, migrant protection has been at the core of our services. This will not have been possible without vigorous partnerships with countries of destination and migration stakeholders. Present challenges are now interconnected and cut across borders and nations. This is the time for global solidarity to maintain multilateral efforts and collective action to not only fight against COVID-19, but to ensure that migrants are afforded protection by all states, whether they are countries of origin, transit, or destination. The protection needed also goes beyond labor protection. Protection against racism and xenophobia has never been more paramount than now. Ironically, Filipinos have been at the receiving end of Asian hate, whether it is our health workers who are serving the front lines of the national health systems of countries of destination. We believe that rebuilding this kind of social contract among ourselves can deliver aspirations of a safe or daily and regular nutrition capable within a reach. As we move towards the IMRF, we hope to have more meaningful and fruitful discussions to strengthen the implementation of the GCM. I would like to take this opportunity to thank fellow member states, the IOM, the UN Migration Network, and the partners in civil society, for the relentless cooperation and advancing the GCM and protection of our migrants in this trying times. This only by working as one can we recover as one and eventually heal as one. Thank you very much. Back to you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you. We thank the Honourable Sarah Arula for her very informative contribution, which we will be discussing when we open the floor for comments and participation. Our second speaker is Mr. Fawit Masuku Watsu. He is an inclusion advisor of the Mayor of Bristol. He will share the city's perspective on supporting migrant inclusion and social protection, partnership with the government and other relevant partners on this. We'll also present what are the possible opportunities and innovative solutions that can be introduced to ensure full migrant inclusion and social cohesion and empower both migrants and communities in the COVID-19 response and recovery from a local perspective. In addition, he would expand on the contribution of cities as chance makers on global issues, more specifically role for cities within the GCM. As I've said, he works as inclusion advisor who was a former journalist from Zimbabwe. He also worked as communication manager for the Refugees of Salem Seekers Media Project run by the MediaWise Trust, the Journalism Ethics Charity and Organizational Chair. He's deeply involved within the community in Bristol and has been a trustee for a number of charities. He's one of the key founders of African Voices Forum. Mr. Fawit Masuku Watsu, please, over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Marius, for the introductions, greetings of brothers and sisters, friends, wherever you are. It's a good afternoon, good evening, good morning. I just wanted to thank my other colleague, Sarah Lau, for a very good reflective of the work that you've been doing in the Philippines. I'm from Bristol, which is a very international city. We are a city of about 100 languages and people from over 187 countries of origin, and we are stand to be proud to be a city of sanctuary, a city that celebrates our diversity. Why am I saying this? It's because we see migration as an asset to the city. But more specifically to the discussion for today, we have COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated the pre-existing inequalities in Bristol. I'm pretty sure some of you share similar experiences. But however, what we have done through our mayor, we also take our one-seat approach, which aims to make Bristol a welcoming and safe space for all and tap into the talents that invest into our economic development, as well as those who need protection as we are a city of hope and aspiration where everyone can share in its success. I also wanted to express our city's commitment to GCM or objectives as well as IMF principles. And what we have seen during COVID-19, particularly the revolution of generosity across the city, people wanting to help each other whether it's from the migrant community, the local Brazilians and everybody. And so what we are saying as a city is to, how do we harness the goodwill, that revolution of generosity that brings everybody together and understanding that we are dealing with people that also not only living in Bristol, but who have a huge responsibility in the countries of origin where they come from, where it might be incidents where they are being affected by climate migration as an example. So we're really quite cognizant that whatever we do here in the city is very important that we don't leave everybody behind. But it's not easy. It's a challenge and some of the challenges that we experience at local level, as well as national and the national has been shared by our colleagues. I will just focus specifically in our experience here in Bristol and the UK. Partly is to do with national legislation and specifically on immigration police which creates a hostile environment. In our case where we have people who end up being migrants being subjected to a condition we call a no recourse to public funds. Why is it important for me to mention that it's very important because when people have been working, people have been really working so hard in supporting their family, but with COVID, obviously, unfortunately, some of the people had to lose their jobs. They have to lose their job, they don't have the right. So they don't have that access to welfare support which hinders heavily in terms of families, in terms of people's mental health as well as rebuilding their skills and careers to integrate into the community. So what do we do in terms of professional re-skilling of our migrant communities, both who are currently arriving into the city? I've just given an example of where is our involvement with the Syrian resettlement, our involvement with the current Afghan resettlement as well as our existing migrant communities is far back from the Windrush generation. We set up what we call a COVID race equality group looking at specifically and understand that the impact of COVID had been really high within our migrant communities who also work within our healthcare system. The majority of our people are nurses and doctors and et cetera within from the migrant community. How do we extend and ensure that people are supported? So understanding people's experiences. So again, using our one city approach, we have people from across the city and our partners to look at from a COVID race equality. How do we address the equal race equality that has been exacerbated by the impact of COVID? Because we can talk about economic recovery, but we cannot talk about it well as we're not coming from the same level. So it was really important for us to engage our universities, engage our partners in having this conversation. We also understanding that we have new communities that are coming from very difficult environment. People who have unfortunately some would be victims of modern slavery, exploitation, people who have experienced trauma, people who have experienced mental health issues. How would they start to rebuild their lives and career in Bristol? So it's really important for us to work with our partners to support a rep around, support our migrant communities coming together. And also in terms of economic recovery, through support from our central government, we also look at where providing resources, funding within our high street support, where focusing predominately, where we know in our cities where there's a predominant migrant community businesses from shops and other enterprises that we see are probably most of us of the world, but we also targeted on those key areas to support our businesses that has been affected, not only providing grants alone, but also providing advice and support and knowing fully well that they would need that kind of support through our partners with agencies in the city, within the voluntary sector. So we realize that it is really an inclusion that we need those resources. We need, there is a human resources base, people are enterprising within our migrant communities, but they've been hit hard with COVID-19, and there's this lack of safety net where they are not able to access support, as I say, in a national legislation, which hinders people to have access, but overall in a positive step that we have seen that the pandemic has shown us that we can not revert to business as usual, it's not an option, but actually these global issues help us to push us to, especially cities to work together through partnerships, sharing, as well as learning from each other. We also learn through our core cities within the UK, as well as engaging proactively with the government to see how we can support our communities and also be, as a city, be on the forefront because of our experience of our migrant communities within the city and become sort of the voice of wisdom, the voice of those people who have lived experience at the local level in terms of shaping national legislation in terms of being on the discourse to understand some of the challenges that people face. I'll give an example on the health aspect here in the UK. Asylum seekers in particular can receive primary health care, but when it becomes to secondary care, it becomes very difficult to have to pay for their fees. So it's all those limiting things that hinder people to really be active players within the city. So it's really trying to ensure that we also advocate for restrictive policies and guidelines that affects our delivery. But we also champion that the need for resources, particularly at local level, which we say, municipal financing is really critical because we have these aspirations at local level, but we may not be limited in terms of resources that we need. So it's mobilizing through our city partners as well as allowing national and international, through vehicles like the Mayor's Migration Council where the mayor is in executive board to look at how collectively as cities and as mayors, we can have a unified voice and ensuring that whatever discussion that we have, that voice of lived experience is also important in terms of shaping our responses, in terms of shaping policy both at local as well as at national and international level as such. We cannot move on our own. We need as Sarah alluded earlier on that it's really important that there is three global issues at the pandemic and racial inequality in the climate, in addition to that, we have a lot in common as human beings. So it is important that we don't look at our difference. And as these people, we must treat each other with dignity and respect and understand that we can do much more collaboratively and together to support our vulnerable people. As a side, a quick one example, currently through our resettlement where we work with the Department of Works to really help people to professional integration or providing them with training in terms of job opportunities, in terms of entrepreneurship, one-to-one, those kinds of one-to-one support to help people to quickly integrate into the community so that they are able to, we tap into their skills, tap into their talent, which is beneficial for the vibrance of our city, as well as revisiting that revolution of generosity that has been outpouring during COVID and say, how do we move forward collectively together as a city for people who are, during the time of pandemic, we come together and support everybody without necessarily looking at the lens of migration or people's difference. How do we harness that? How do we move together collectively? So our city approach really help us to continue moving through that direction and develop a narrative as a city of sanctuary, a city that gives, try to give hope to everyone. And we cannot do alone as a local authority is critical that we engage our local partners as well as the national government. And we sit together on the table to look at the things that will help us to address some of the challenges that our migrant communities experience regarding terms of health, in terms of economic participation, in terms of language, because it's critical that we provide English to people in order to contribute in the society, and as much as we also uphold the contribution of the diversity of the culture that is being brought into the city, but is also looking at educational integration, working with our educational institutions from schools to universities, and say how do we ensure that we collectively take our individual step in making sure that we are indeed a real city of sanctuary. But also at international level as a city, we work with other partners globally because we realize that I think the voice of the city is critical in this discussion in light of the pandemics that we all know and our experiences across the globe is important that it's being listened to. How do we ensure that those voices of cities are at the center of decision making both within national governments and also at global institutions to make sure that some of the city's aspirations can be fulfilled by opening up resources that will enable us to navigate some of the challenges presented to us in terms of national legislation. So it's really critical that we move forward. I would just, in terms of conclusion, I would just give you one example, post-COVID. Our women's commission looked at specifically how do we move forward with our women, how they supported post-COVID across a bridge.  So it's really also looking down into how vulnerable some of our women migrants are within our city, how they can be supported. So in a nutshell, I would just really emphasize that point that the pandemic has taught us to actually collaborative working and partnership and inspire that to hope to our migrant communities. Thank you. Back to you. Thank you very much to Mr. Fowat-Masquot, for his very important, interesting contribution, what they have been doing and achieved, what they have achieved in Bristol. Our third panelist is Mr. Charles Sinesi. He is the founder and the president of the UN ECOSOC, a created Afro-European Medical and Research Network. This is a network that brings together health practitioners in the diaspora to serve people in hard-to-reach villages and towns all over sub-Saharan Africa. He has an esteemed career. Several accolades of recognitions have come his way over the years. Mrs. Nessie will bring his experience and work at the AEMRN to improve the quality of life of people from low-income countries through innovative, sustainable means. And will bring this experience to us in the course of his presentation. Mrs. Nessie, welcome and looking forward to your presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much, Marius. And it's a special pleasure for me to join this esteemed forum for such a lively discussion. And as the moderator has already said, I'm Dr. Charles Sinesi. I'm the physician, a migrant based in Switzerland. And I am currently in Sierra Leone joining your life from the IRM office. Just shows you with migrants we transverse the continent back and forth. And indeed we have the Afro-European Medical Research Network which is a network of health and health supporting professionals. Health according to the WHO definition of 1948. And which means we have a holistic approach to health. And so we use the network sort of as an entry point. We have members in all the continents around the globe and in almost every South-Saharan Africa countries we have so few in-laws in North Africa. And the essence of the network is to share and exchange knowledge and also to give back to our countries our continents of origin. How do we go about this? We organize symposium, workshops, et cetera and in high-level countries in Geneva, Switzerland and in Bern, in Federal Capital, where I stay. On topical issues that affect the welfare of migrants living in Switzerland as well as in other European countries and countries around the globe. And with sort of work we talk by taking the outcome of these conferences and workshop onto the field to see how best we could leverage and improve the health care of people in low and middle income countries especially the hard-to-wish population. And we do this by using a very innovative method we call the diaspora mission, the pump by clinics. We are in health professionals from all the disciplines. You name it, from the physicians, the surgeons and the dermatologists, the bedwives, the dentists, the eye specialists, the ear, nose and throat specialists, the epidemiologists and the laboratory technicians. We come together. Together with other health-supporting staff you can be a lawyer, you can be an advocate. We all come together as a team and we go to a particular low and middle income country anywhere in Africa but led by the local health care delivery system IE, the ministries of health. They are the custodians of the health of the world. And then we also align ourselves with international partners. For instance, the United Nations and the sub-agents in such as the World Health Organization. So that we have an overarching agenda to make sure that our interventions in the low and middle income country is in line with the country's health care delivery system and policies is in line with the WHO and also the United Nations, especially the sustainable development course, universal health coverage. We don't want anyone to be left behind. And we are doing this for the past 25 years. And so we align also with other groups across Africa, the WHO, Brazil and the other countries. So we go to a particular country. That's what the best case scenario before this whole pandemic thing started to disturb our operations. And we train hands with the local health care delivery system and the doctors and the nurses and we go to a very far remote village where we deliver our services. First of all, we try to increase the health care, the awareness, health-seeking behavior of the people. We amend certain health elements, for instance, surgical intervention for Hania, Hania, Hygiene, just a large amount of organs. And then anything that's actually affecting them. At the end of the day, we also take the younger doctors and nurses and midwives so that we can transfer, we can mentor one to one, we can empower their skills. That's what the best case scenario, and there came the past years when the pandemic first came to Ebola. And then most of us in the diaspora were hit hard because our by-country Sierra Leone was one of the biggest epicenters and then the Liberia and Guinea, we are all neighbors. And so we had to use our diaspora experience in that we could not have come down directly, physically to work on the ground. We could, I was able to recruit a lot of my colleagues through the WHO to make sure that we come down and they came to Sierra Leone. It was an incredible collaboration of South-South collaboration by colleagues in Kenya where I've been working for the past 18 years. We joined hands with us, colleagues from Uganda and so we all, because they had a bit of experience in Uganda managing Ebola. So these are the sorts of levees we were able to bring on the table. I was also a consultant with WHO in Geneva in developing the guidelines for the Ebola, especially the PPA, the Personal Protective Equipment. I was the chairman for one of the subgroups. And so we from the diaspora, we have seen on both sides of the eye. I was trained in Sierra Leone, I'm living in Switzerland with such a huge network. So as his headphones said, the best pilot for a route is somebody who has worked for that route. So when we handed the diaspora and coming down to train hands with our colleagues to say, hey, we are here to compliment your iPhone. We did it with Ebola and then came again the corona, COVID-19. And learning from the experience of the Ebola, which is what I believe in, building up what we already had the infrastructure of the Ebola, we were able to mount the response enough because the COVID-19 came, there was a shutdown of airport, everywhere was closed. So we had to send money to support our colleagues, especially the frontline health workers. We have a key shortage of health workers in low and middle income countries. So our first response was to protect the little we had because we lost so much during the Ebola. And it worked, we were able to send money so that we can have hand sanitizer, the pharmacies learned how to make hand sanitizer without importing them, how to make face masks. So we did the diaspora, we actually through our media campaign and set up a platform, we gathered money, we sent it down to the local and the colleagues and they were able to mount and respond in most of the African countries, which all goes well that the diaspora can actually do a lot. And we have continued desperately COVID-19 issues. It made it difficult for us to run our mobile clinics. But last November, we said, hey, we can run over weeks. And we did pass your first left US, UK, and Switzerland and other European countries, other colleagues in West Africa and other East African Kenya, Nigeria, they joined hands with us. We came down to Sierra Leone for three weeks, we were able to run the mobile clinics again, bringing health to the people, increasing the health awareness, partnering with our colleagues at the ministries of health so that at least we can have a comprehensive response, laying the groundwork for this pandemic as it gradually phasing out. I'm based in Switzerland and we have lifted most of the restrictions, but here in Sierra Leone, the restrictions are still a bit really hard, which means we collaborate, we learn from one another and we share experiences. And then going forward, we hope that such initiatives can be built upon. There is a lot we can do. Most of us out in the diaspora, we tend to be like the opinion leaders, when we come there, they listen a lot to us. So what I'm going to do for you, the European Medical Research Network for short informed is that we also organize knowledge sharing events in Switzerland among the diaspora because when you empower them with information, when you empower them with knowledge like the training or trainer, they are able to lead back to their countries or continents of origin, when they go on holidays or to short term missions. And that's also very pushy because we don't know it all, but we share our knowledge. We start to synergize our efforts so that we can maximize the output and we leave no one behind. And so I think more will come up with questions and answers, but for now, that's my short presentation. We work with government as well because they are the custodians. We work with the WHO, they are the custodian of the health. So it means it's all inclusive and have regular sessions at the United Nations in Geneva or New York, where I'm a creditor on the Austria. So we bring together the colleagues there. We have the EcoStock status which allows us to use free rooms and also our colleagues in Asia, in the North Americas, in the South Americas. It's a huge network. We tend to sort of hold hands together because most countries, the low and middle income countries we share the same identity, lack of healthcare, lack of basic amenities. It's only the value that changes from one country to another, from one country to another. But the bottom line is that we have the same lack of basic indicators. So therefore we learn to work as a team. It gives us a sense of where you come from. We don't need to be the same, to like one another, to work towards a common vision. We should be defined by what is lacking in us, among us in our communities and not such a response. And we reach out to colleagues to evaluate what amaranth is doing. And we hope that we can build up on this initiative, especially in such pandemics as we prepare for any other pandemic that will come because history has taught us that it's a repetition of things that God wants in the wild. We don't want it, but the realities are my three epidemiologists. We have to be prepared. So we are laying the groundwork that we did before. And with that short intervention, I'm open to more questions as we move forward. I thank you very much. Thank you so much to Dr. Charles and Esi for this very important contribution and the work done under the auspices of MRN. I believe what that we now have to hand the presentation for the moment back to Mr. Dejan Kessler a week to help facilitate the panel part of our discussion. Thank you, Mr. Dejan Kessler. Thank you, Chair. At this moment, we have the three requests for intervention. The first one is Sarah Katip from Solidarity Center, followed by Angela Maria Rosales from National Director of Socialist Children's Village, Colombia and followed by Maria Loen Gomez-Sionette, Friends World Committee for Consultation. Sarah, floor is yours. Thank you for the honorable speakers and thank you, Mr. Moderator, for giving me the opportunity to speak. My name is Sarah Al-Khatib and I'm the field-based migration specialist for the MENA region of the Solidarity Center and International Workers Rights NGO. The failure to include migrants in social protection umbrellas is part of the architecture of global migration governance. The pandemic revealed the failure of labor migration systems around the world to protect migrant workers, especially that they are concentrated in the most affected sectors, which are the informal, unregulated, precarious, low-waged and unorganized sectors in which migrant workers are excluded from the protection of labor legislations and contracts. These sectors are not subject to administrative control and labor inspection and access to justice channels. We haven't seen serious efforts to regulate these sectors. Business and employers resist any attempts and therefore these sectors are expanding and the number of workers deprived of social protections increases. Vulnerable groups of migrant workers work in these sectors, such as women, children, undocumented workers and others. Though all migrant workers are potentially vulnerable as they are excluded from labor law and social protection schemes that would support them. Only businesses and strapless employers benefit from the irregular migration and the expansion of the informal economy sectors. The administrative corruption and weak migration governance allow them to evade their responsibilities to provide social protection, which ultimately strains state's budgets and threatens social and economic stability due to the spread of poverty, famine, diseases and poor education. The current migration system hindered the achievement of the SDGs. So we need a new global social contract that pays attention to labor migration and turns it into an opportunity to achieve the SDGs by abolishing the current distorted migration systems such as the sponsorship system, the Middle East as an example and creating a new global migration system that recognizes migrant workers across the world and in all sectors as workers and that values their work and great contributions in the social and economic development of countries and allow them to practice freedom of association and collective bargaining. During the pandemic, leaders of migrant communities have played important roles in raising awareness about the virus and the vaccination and delivering humanitarian aid to those affected in these communities. If their efforts were organized through recognized unions and associations this would have saved the world a lot of time, efforts and financial losses. Migrant workers should be recognized as key actors and main stakeholders in social dialogue. The international community must stand against any violation of freedom of assembly and association as one of the most important fundamental standards by binding for ILO member states. The creation of a new better and fair labor migration system is an opportunity to address the drivers of forced migration such as poverty, unemployment, worse crisis, climate change and natural disasters in order to protect the health and social systems of countries from collapse, especially in times of crisis. A new more fair and just labor migration system is an opportunity to create social protection systems that include migrants in social security that is portable, end of service, compensation, pensions and maternity funds and cover them with health insurance, occupational health and safety protection from occupational diseases and compensation for work injuries. It is also an opportunity to organize the unorganized sectors and transform the informal economy into a formal economy with all what it takes from ratifying international conventions, the amendments and creation of national legislations and policies, bilateral agreements, strengthening law enforcement and access to justice, cooperation of the international community to enhance accountability for all those who deviate from international standards and cooperation in combating administrative corruption and crimes of forced labor. Migrant workers are workers regardless of their migration status, race and gender and therefore are entitled to their full human and labor rights and social protections recognizing their agency to act collectively and demand better wages and working conditions. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Sara Katif from Solidarity Center and I would like to just remind everybody please speak on a reasonable pace because we need to translate everything properly. Now I would like to give the floor to National Director of SOS Children's Village, Colombia, Angela Maria Rosales. Hello, good day and a warm greeting to all. There are two pre-existing preconditions that need to be considered when analyzing the situation of migration in Colombia. One of them is the incapacity of the welfare system to provide protection and care to all children and families where specific regions of the country are very impoverished and communities are highly risked continuously. These are communities that have been definitely left behind for many, many decades. These conditions are present in the majority of the country that are actually the reception communities for migrants. The second condition is that Colombia still presents a high percentage of poverty and social violence with numbers on the rise in terms of internal displacement, confinement, social affectations due to the presence of armed groups that recruit and exploit teenagers and young adults. This challenges the capacity of the authorities and all the partners to guarantee protective environments for all children in the country. These two are the conditions into which children and families are migrating to. Since 2018, SOS Children's Village Colombia has provided an emergency humanitarian response to the Venezuelan migration crisis with almost 2 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees in our country, as well as returned Colombians. Our actions have focused mainly on the protection, integration, shelter and education in emergencies for the most vulnerable migrants with presence in various regions of the country. The crisis caused by COVID-19 is another condition that is on top of the preexisting situations that the country has lived. This increased the risk of migrants to COVID-19 and of course, the need to improve support to them with children and families on the focus. The migrants are the most vulnerable population in risk of infection. They have less resources for the prevention of contracting COVID-19. They do not receive the same health services when they are affected or are in recuperation of the disease. Some of the major impacts that are worked with children and families can identify are the lack of stable income for the children and families of migrating children and families. Do not allow children and families to have access to water, to soap or to face masks. These are faced with COVID-19 with less opportunities of preventing the virus and then are of course more vulnerable. The irregular situation of them limits their access to health services until 2021, about 56% of the migrants that do not have a legal condition in the country did not access the health service adequately. So the challenge that the pandemic has had in this population is not only in the general health system but of course in the capacity of the health system to attend to more population and specifically to the migrant population. Migrants do not have access to regular health services, to medicines or to treatments and of course the situation of the pandemic postponed the capacity of giving access to migrants to other services and only prioritizing the services of COVID-19. The most affected are pregnant women and children. The living conditions of many migrant families are solved by sharing houses with other family groups. This generates overcrowding and is of course a very high risk for contracting COVID-19. Discrimination has also increased in many parts of the country since many people consider migrants as a possible transmitter of COVID-19. Access to education for children and young people through the pandemic was already a big challenge. Our education service does not have the capacity to responding to all children in the country but responding to children in migrant condition is even more or a higher challenge. With COVID-19, this challenge increased. All children had classes suspended for more than 18 months and the physical infrastructure was inadequate to guarantee social distancing in schools. This has delayed even more the capacity of migrant children to access education and to retake their opportunities of learning. This is a situation that affects almost 40% of the migrant children in the country. Children and youth that do not have access to education or recreation or adequate services and activities are more on the street. This has increased of course their presence of cases of sexual abuse, exploitation and risk of recruitment of the migrant children. We think from SOS Children's Villages in Columbia that the way forward is to center all responses to migration on children. They are the most vulnerable migrants. They are the most in needs. Families are the best way to articulate responses to the migrant populations. The affectation of COVID-19 has put many children at risk and of course the possibility of their families responding and protecting them has also decreased. There is also a high need to favor the nexus between emergency responses and development responses to support migrants on the move and to support those that have already settled in the country. We take this opportunity to thank IOM and all the UN system in the support that they have brought us into the migrating children and to the receptive communities in Columbia. And we also wish that our articulated work can continue improving the living conditions of thousands of children in the country. We recognize the great potential of migrants and the reception communities to generate solutions together. And we will always call for a clear focus on migrating children so that no child has to grow up alone and no boy, girl or teenager is left behind. Many thanks. Thank you, Angela, US overview of work of SS Columbia and of course what's happening currently in Columbia. Now I would like to give the floor for Marisa Leon Gomez-Sonnet, Friends World Committee for Consultation. Yes, thank you. Thank you, moderator and the panelists for your interventions. The GCM contains a promise of participatory processes expressed in its emphasis on a people-centered human rights-based and whole-of-society approach to migration policy. Migrants must be included in a renewed social contract as proposed by the common agenda. However, inclusion of the most impacted should not only be at the receiving end. Migrants should be part of relevant international policy processes in a way that is ethical, sustainable and safe while expanding meaningful participatory processes at the local, national and regional levels. Additionally, in line with the common goal of leaving no one behind, states must address racism and migration governance. Racism, discrimination and xenophobia are deeply entrenched in policy practices leading to human rights violations and placing migrants in situations of vulnerabilities. The Quaker United Nations Office has published policy papers addressing these issues providing recommendations and suggesting pledges. We would like to see these issues taking forward through the progress declaration as well as in pledges. So my question is to the panelists, how do you think that the progress declaration can help operationalize commitments on participation, inclusion and anti-racism? Thank you. Thank you. We have still four more requests for intervention. Then I will ask our future intervening to short the May the Day intervention, you know, sum up as possible in two minutes if that will work. Next on the list is Portugal, followed by Nigeria, followed by Council of Europe, followed by Iran. Portugal, Gloria Sosa Flores, yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Excellencies, colleagues, on behalf of Portugal, I would like to make a brief contribution on this panel. Portugal has long advocated for human rights based on the whole of society approach to migration, promoting a positive narrative on migrants' contribution to societies. In this regard, our national efforts to address and recover from the pandemic fully take migrants on board, aiming at reducing and addressing migrants' vulnerabilities, particularly during the pandemic. In 2020, Portugal has granted temporary residence status to more than 350,000 migrants, providing them full access to healthcare and social support to enter into housing rental and employment contracts, to open bank accounts, and to contract essential public services. These measures have removed the risk of arrest and detention. Migrants have also been included into our vaccination plan regardless of their status. Moreover, Portugal has been strengthening integration measures, for example, through the National Network of Support Centers for the Integration of Migrants, functioning as one-stop shops, and providing support in different aspects, regardless of legal status and free of charge. Finally, I would like also to mention the Welcome Guide for Migrants published in December, 2021, a guidebook designed to help public, private and civil society institutions and support migrants intending to live in Portugal. I thank you. Thank you, Portugal, for your intervention. Next, Interini is coming from Nigeria. Papkanlata, please. Thank you, moderator, for giving me the floor. Thank you for giving Nigeria the floor. COVID-19 revealed the fragile nature of humanity much more and precarious impacts on migrants and their families. Bearing in mind the challenges in the immediate and long term. In view of this, it has become very pertinent for national leadership and the global community to put appropriate plans in place through new alliances for cooperation to address the root causes of migration, the conditions of migrant workers, offering legal pathways to migration and reintegrating irregular migrants into communities. Such envisaged alliances should work to ensure full inclusion of migrants in national preparedness and response plans and assist to collate relevant information in applicable languages in line with national level preparedness. To achieve this, countries must act in concert by developing or strengthening humanitarian strategic plans through a whole of government approach and society approach. We must all work stridently to leverage on objective 23 of the global compact and migration and ensure that the progress made on this objective contributes to reducing the inequalities outlined in the 2030 agenda and to ensure that migration governance is considered a global good, truly, which leaves no one behind. In my country, Nigeria, a crucial foundation for the inclusion of persons of concern into national services has been highlighted to include issues such as education, health, water, sanitation and hygiene, while also identifying the need to promote self-reliance within the national economic development framework. I should like to report that the government is finalizing its 2021 to 2025 medium-term development plan where persons of concerns are incorporated and included in budgetary provisions for projects that address their challenges. Finally, and in response to the question of inequalities being at the root course of migration, we must begin to recognize partnerships that focus on supporting development initiatives which leverage on many opportunities for the unemployed and the underemployed by improving platforms and opportunities to learn and share best practices. I thank you. Many thanks, Nigeria. Our next scene on the list is representative of the Council of Europe, Maria Uchoa. Maria, please, for who is yours. Thank you very much, moderator. You know that speaking at the reasonable pace is really a challenge for me, but I'll try to do my best and apologize with the inter-participate, I don't really manage. I already mentioned on Monday the five-year action plan of the Council of Europe dealing with the protection of the most vulnerable migrants. I would like to say that I'll try to stick to two less than two minutes. First, the challenges raised by the pandemic are also opportunities to better target our work based on the many lessons learned in the past years. So the action plan, which I already mentioned, contains important activities aimed at promoting fair access to healthcare, health literacy and practical guidance for social workers and health professionals working with migrants and refugees. We also address drug-related challenges for refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons, because at the Council of Europe, we have an intergovernmental body dealing with drug prevention, which is called the Pompidou Group, and this group conducts since 2010 a series of capacity building trainees, which are tailored for policymakers, but also for professionals working with refugees and migrants. Currently 15 countries covering the world a lot are part of this program. And they are developing a handbook on guiding principle for professionals working with migrants and refugees in the field of addiction and drug prevention. And we will let you know as soon as this handbook is launched. In the framework of the third pillar of the action plan, the Council of Europe is developing tools to promote inclusion and empowerment of migrants. And these tools also fill the scope of objective 16 and 18 of the Global Compact for Migration. The project on the European Qualification Passengers for Refugees aims to ease the integration of refugees through work by assessing their qualifications and support is also given to the practical implementation of literacy framework for migrants and refugees with non or low literate migrants. In that regard, our tool kids project 6 to strengthen the capacity of education systems to facilitate integration of children with migrant migrants. The integration of migrants and especially migrant youth to work on democratic participation continues also in the years to come. In this context, we strengthen our work on the implementation of the Committee on Recommendation and Young Refugees Transition to Adults Hold. And then last but not least, we are working on a recommendation to protect the rights of migrant refugees and rely as I am seeking women and girls which is expected to be adopted in the first half of this year. The draft recommendation includes a section of an integration calling on member states to highlight the contribution that migrants and refugees, girls and women bring to society, economy and culture in whole societies as a way to facilitate their integration and empowerment. I'll just conclude by saying that the action plan also provides opportunities for multilateral cooperation in the field of human rights and migrant context. And we are happy and ready to examine concrete cooperation possibilities with external partners. And let me emphasize again, as I said already on Monday that by implementing the action plan on protecting vulnerable persons in the context of migration and asylum in Europe, the Council of Europe contributes to the implementation of the Global Compact for Migration. I thank you for your attention. Thank you, Council of Europe. Our final request for intervention for this particular panel coming from Iran, Aksan Mitenzam, please, floor is yours. Good morning and good afternoon, colleagues. Thank you, Mr. Moderator and the panelist and previous speakers for their inspiring presentations. My name is Aksan Mitenzam from the Iran's mission in Geneva. I will try to be brief here. Iran has so far long been a transit route as well as destination for displaced persons and migrants, including irregular migrants and other undocumented foreign nationals from neighboring countries. We have done our best to extend assistance to the migrants by providing educational health and medical services with a view to alleviating their suffering. By their full inclusion in the national COVID-19 response, we have ensured their free access to COVID-19 related tests and treatment. Iran has done its utmost to provide them with livelihood access to job opportunities, free and inclusive education for children, health services and universal public health insurance and COVID-19 related assistance. Despite the fact that unilateral coercive measures alongside COVID-19 pandemic have adversely affected both Iran's hosting capacity as well as the socioeconomic well-being of migrants, all foreign nationals residing in Iran have been included in national vaccination plan irrespective of their legal status and approximately 4 million dose of vaccine have been administrated for them till now. Therefore, more than 77% of foreign nationals in Iran have been covered in the country's vaccination plan regardless of their special and social groups. Distinguished colleagues, we should consider the vulnerability in a holistic approach. Prioritizing certain groups among other is not in favor of these groups. We believe that considering cultural diversity and respect to the values and traditions of hosting communities is a key point for integration and promoting the whole of society approach. Respecting the diversity is a mutual value and should be reciprocal in the context of migration. Considering this fact and belief would be effective on ensuring full migration in migrant inclusion and social collision and in power both migrants and communities in the COVID-19 response and other aspects of protection regime. I thank you for your attention. Many thanks, Hiran. Now I would like to give the floor back to Professor Olivier for the final words from him and from the panelists. Thank you so much to our moderator of this particular panel discussion and ladies and gentlemen, also to our esteemed speakers. I think we have heard many important messages. If I could try and summarize this in one hand, we have taken note of innovative and comprehensive measures adopted by governments also in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic but also otherwise. And secondly, but quite importantly, increasingly the role of the different range of stakeholders including in the private context, multilateral cooperation at the diaspora all with a view to leave no one behind as far as migrants in particular are concerned and taking our cue of course from the sustainable development goals, the social contract idea as reflected in the common agenda of the UN and of course the global compact of migration. It remains for me to ask our three panelists and literally within one minute each to give their final views and maybe if they want to respond within that minute to one or two of the questions that or comments that may have been raised. Let's start in the same order that we have listened to our panelists and in the first place, the undersecretary, Sarah Lohariola from the Philippines over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much professor. I just like to respond to the question about the progress declaration and where it brings states. It is often said that the global compact for immigration is the pathway to achieving this sustainable development goals. And in 2018 when it was adopted, a lot of people were hopeful but we were not sure where it would go. But from 2018 to 2022, the Philippines has formed a lot of partnerships with countries of destination and there were many changes that happened for the good and we see that this is a product of the global compact for migration. We are looking forward that the progress declaration will be serve as a benchmark to see how states are and will serve as an inspiration for all of us to do better. From 2018 to 2022, there's a lot of things that have changed and we think it has brought us a lot of hope in the face of the pandemic and this progress declaration will bring us forward so that we'll be able to have safe or really a regular migration for all migrants regardless of their migration status. So thank you very much. Thank you very much to you, Honorable Arirola for this input. We ask again Mr. Fawwit Masu, Watson to talk to any of the comments received and to diffuse with one minute to you, please. Mr. Masu, go at you. Thank you. My response would be around sort of commenting on racism really and I think it's important that in all discussions we have particularly in the governance of migration, we uproot racism and it's everywhere. The othering and the closing and tightening of borders, that language I think is critical for all of us to really look at we are all people. That's the fundamental question that we need to address and those in the corridors of power should be a beacon of hope in terms of the language they use that divides us. So I think it's really important that we don't have to shy away and accept and acknowledge the deepness and the pain that is reducing inequality and so far as racial inequality is concerned because that's how policies are being crafted to define people into certain categories and in as much as we want to have cities that embrace but I think racism is really critical that we confront it. We educate people. We make sure that we also listen to the voices of people that have been at the receiving end of racism. So I think it's opening that safe space for dialogue is critical. Thank you. Thank you for this very important contribution that you've made. Finally, Dr. Charles Srenesi, over to you. One minute. Thank you. Thank you very much, moderator and all the participants. And indeed I will build upon one of the questions how can we, as migrants, be part of the recovery process? And I always say, for instance, this is an experience as we have to organize ourselves as migrants so that at least we can be a force to work on this and engage in this government over a lot of issues. And taking my team also to different African countries, if you go to Rome, you do as a Romans too. So it's for all the migrants to really understand the culture of the countries we come to. Yes, racism exists, but let do our level best to align our values with the values of whichever country we use in Nigeria, in Sierra Leone, in Switzerland, in the UK. I work around all the globe. And the context of COVID, it is my wish that we continue to support one another and raise the bar so that the migrant population can be included in all of the initiatives that concerns them because they know we are the shoe bonds that's jammed, know we are the shoes where bonds better. So with that, I hope we continue the dialogue and we are like think tankers for our communities so that we can access their problems, bring them to a bigger product of work. What a platform, sorry. And I thank you very much. I will look forward for the engagement. I thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Sinesi, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the end of this instructive session, the first panel of the day on migrant inclusion, COVID 19 recovery and social protection, a renewed social contract. Despite all the challenges experienced by migrants and migrant workers, we've heard about very important steps taken by governments and other role-players in the COVID 19 context. As far as social protection particularly is concerned and the lessons that are there for us to take forward in this regard and in that process to lean very heavily on the guiding frameworks that are out there in the common agenda with its emphasis on the social contract. And in particular as well, the global combat on migration as was remarked by our first panelist from the Philippines that it was a moment in time in history which has now become a movement. And I think we see some of that in the response of governments and other role-plays in the COVID 19 context for us to take all of that forward, not just as a discourse, but certainly as a matter of practice and policy. I greet you, I thank you for your participation and I wish you a successful further deliberation in the course of the IDM, the last day of the IDM today. Thank you so much. Thank you to all panelists and participants for the panel on our work and special thanks go to moderator, Professor Olivier as he actually working with us from Australia where is now 2 a.m. And really thanks a lot for being with us in such a early hour, not actually that late. Now we are slowly but not slowly quickly transiting to panel two, what is the red thinking skilled migration to address persistent labor shortages. And I would like to give the floor to our deputy director general for management reform, Ms. Amy Hope. Amy, floor is yours. Thank you so much. And welcome Iowa member states, our guest speakers and our audience to the very last panel of day three. Today's conversation is about rethinking skilled migration to address persistent labor shortages. It's also the very last session of our first international dialogue on migration this year, which has been guided under the overarching theme of global comeback for migration implementation in practice, successes, challenges and innovative approaches. As you guys know, this IDM is our best forum for bringing together the migration policy dialogue. We bring together policymakers and practitioners from around the world. And this year, the IDM is contributing to the international migration review forum for providing space to assess and gather relevant data, evidence, effective practices, innovative approaches and recommendations as they relate to the implementation of the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration. This is an exciting panel today. We're gonna take a closer look at the objective number five and 18. And that promotes the availability and flexibility of regular pathways for various categories of migrants, including those in need of protection, as well as recognizing the skills and the qualifications and the competences that migrants bring to the table. We are seeing around the world that countries lack workers to maintain critical infrastructure and economic productivity. We saw it specifically with regard to COVID-19, the lack of available healthcare workers was present throughout the United States and other countries in the world. But at the same time, there are tremendous labor qualifications, criteria skills that we're seeing across the world and we haven't fully taken advantage of it. There's been momentum around the skills-based mobility and skills mobility partnerships. These are basically agreements between states where they commit to joint skills development and mobility pathways so that we promote human capital formation and positive labor market outcomes. They provide a much needed opportunity for safe, regular and orderly pathways for various categories of migrants and bring together the stakeholders that really enable the opportunities that migration provides. The good news for employers in destination countries is that they get a foreign workforce that is tailored toward their specific skills needs. And the origin countries gain from an enlarged pool of workers with in-demand skills, technology transfers and investments in the education and the skills of its workers, which then allows migrants to fulfill their potential in those pathways. Unfortunately, to date, we're just not taking advantage of the tremendous diversity of skills and experiences that migrants bring to the table. And we haven't fully realized the potential that is available and the opportunities that migration presents. So that's why this particular session is so exciting to me. This is the future of migration. This is how we make the case for migration to communities around the world. This conversation today brings together some tremendous panelists who have good news to report. They have experiences that they're going to share with you. They have lessons learned and we'll have first an opportunity for them to present that information to all of you and then a discussion because we want you as the audience to engage in the conversation. And then of course, we'll give our panelists the opportunity for final statements. As always, there will be simultaneous interpretation in English, Spanish and French available throughout the meeting. So we encourage you to become an active part of this conversation and contribute to what is an incredibly dynamic conversation that is happening right now here at the IDM. So enough from me. Let's now introduce the speakers. We have three tremendous speakers who happen to be all women, not on purpose but a wonderful, wonderful group of people. First is Marian Campbell Jarvis. She's the assistant deputy minister for strategic and program policy in Canada at the Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada. She's going to talk to us about some of the programs that they've undertaken in Canada and some of the lessons learned. We then have Avneet Khar. She's the head of the International Collaborations and Corporate Strategy at the Indian National Skills Development Corporation who's going to share their perspective on the importance of skills development and certifying Indian workers to go overseas. And finally, Helen Dempster. She's a policy fellow and assistant director, migration, displacement, and humanitarian policy at the Center for Global Development who will speak about some of these global skills partnerships and how to avoid the effects of brain drain while at the same time allowing origin countries to benefit from the skills and the experiences of migrant workers. So with that, I'm going to stop talking and I'm going to turn it over to Marion Campbell-Jarvis from the Government of Canada to open the conversation. Go ahead, Marion. Oh, thank you so much, Deputy Director General Pope. It's a lovely introduction and it's certainly an honor and a pleasure to share this time with the other panelists and to be speaking to this audience. I would like to first acknowledge that since I'm joining you from Ottawa, Canada that I am on the traditional territory of the Algonquin and Shinobi people. And for those joining from the traditional lands of other Indigenous people, we honour those Indigenous people as well. Before I begin my remarks, I would like to touch on what is happening in Ukraine. It's hard to speak without thinking about this. Very extremely disturbing to Canada and to many other countries. And as part of Canada's response to what our Prime Minister has called an egregious attack, we are leveraging our immigration levers to provide support. Looking at the current global picture, as we move towards the first international migration review forum in May of this year, it is clear that COVID-19, I know we're all fed up of talking about it, but it is very clear that it has had a dramatic impact on migration worldwide. Travel restrictions and the closure of borders have reduced the possibility for migrants to travel. This has made clear to many of us just how important migration is for our economic development and to fill our labour market needs. There is a great deal of positive information and data about the contributions of migrants, particularly the significant social and economic contribution that immigration brings. And as Deputy Director General Pope alluded in her introductory remarks as well. As a champion country of the global compact for migration, I do want to touch upon Canada's work on labour migration pathways and the economic benefits they provide to host communities and to migrants themselves. We do see considerable economic benefits from our regular migration pathways. Allow me to show just a few statistics to show how much migration is interwoven into the fabric of Canadian society. One in three Canadian business owners, sorry, one in three Canadian businesses is owned by an immigrant and one in four healthcare workers is a newcomer. Immigrants make up 37% of pharmacists, 36% of physicians, 39% of dentists, 23% of registered nurses and 35% of nurse aides. Immigration currently accounts for almost 100% of Canada's labour force growth. Roughly 75% of Canada's population growth comes from immigration, mostly in the economic category. In fact, by 2036, immigrants will represent up to 30% of Canada's population, compared with 20.7% in 2011. Canada has a managed migration model and is a strong proponent of safe, orderly, regular pathways. As part of this, we have an annual rolling three-year levels plan. And in 2021, the government set an ambitious target of welcoming 401,000 new permanent residents, just for baseline comparison, 340,100,000 in 2019. So you can see that was quite a growth. Canada exceeded its target, in fact, and welcomed 405,000 new permanent residents last year. This is the most newcomers in a year in Canadian history. And last month, Minister Fraser announced Canada's immigration levels plan for 2022 to 2024. Setting further bold new immigration targets. This plan aims to continuing welcoming immigrants at a rate of about 1% of Canada's population, really to help fill those critical labour market gaps and support a strong economy into the future. So to state the blindingly obvious, immigration with the borders closed and travel restrictions worldwide was pretty challenging. So we made the most of the talent already within our borders in ways that supported Canadian businesses and migrants themselves. The majority of the new permanent residents in 2021 were already in Canada on temporary status. In 2021, Canada opened an innovative pathway for permanent residents, for temporary residents, for over 90,000 temporary workers in essential occupations already employed in Canada, as well as to recent international graduates. This pathway provided permanent status to these temporary residents who possess the skills and experience we needed to fight the pandemic, recover from the pandemic and accelerate our economic growth, as well as having the international graduates who are driving the economy of the future. One of the things, if you kind of know the geography of Canada, vast country, couple of big cities, and most migrants are really attracted to our three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. And so given the demographics and labour shortages in smaller centres or more rural and remote areas, we have developed measures to help spread the benefits of economic immigration across the country. One such pathway is the Atlantic Immigration Programme, which we launched as a pilot in 2017 and actually became a permanent feature of our system this year. The programme is successful in attracting and perhaps most importantly, retaining skilled immigrants and recent international graduates to meet the unique labour and economic needs of the Atlantic region of Canada. Another effort that we've undertaken is the Federal Immigration Pilot for Rural and Northern Communities, which we launched in 2019 to help smaller communities welcome migrants who will fill labour shortages in remote communities. Rural communities employ over 4 million Canadians and account for almost 30% of our national GDP and supply food, water and energy to our urban centres sustaining the industries that contribute to Canada's prosperous economy. Piloting and permanently phasing in innovative pathways have allowed Canada to further test policy and programme changes designed to increase the retention of newcomers in these regions and drive economic growth. One of our lessons learned is that having a job is really, really important, but equally important is the welcoming community to support that integration, to make people want to stay. Complementary pathways for skilled refugees are another area of innovation and we think transformation. With many countries closing their doors to refugees over the course of the pandemic, we continue to offer the world's most vulnerable protection in Canada, while concurrently seeking innovative measures to harness their skills, talents and desires to contribute to their new communities. We have expanded the concept of refugee mobility from a solely humanitarian focus to one which includes mobility based on refugee skills, abilities and other attributes alongside protection. We created the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot to allow skilled refugees who can fill specific labour market needs in Canada to arrive not as refugees, but to arrive in land as economic immigrants. This helps to change the narrative on refugees by focusing on their skills, their education, their experience rather than just their vulnerability. Through the Economic Mobility Pathway Pilot, candidates can apply for permanent residents through existing economic immigration pathways with some facilitation. We recognize that complementary pathways are new tools for refugee protection and that while we have many lessons to share, we can also learn from others experimenting in this area, such as Australia and the United Kingdom. This is why Canada agreed to share the Global Task Force on refugee labour mobility, which will bring together all of the partners needed to implement labour complementary pathways, governments, civil society organizations, employers and international organizations to collectively explore ways to scale up these initiatives and encourage others to adopt and adopt them. We're currently working with the UNHCR, with the IOM, the Government of Australia and other partners to launch the Global Task Force on refugee labour mobility in April. And we hope to attract participation from any and all interested stakeholders. If you'd like more information on this, please don't hesitate to contact me. Based on this model, Canada in concert with the international community is exploring innovative means to expand complementary pathways for refugees as a means to increase access to protection in third countries, in addition to traditional resettlement pathways. They also support the Global Compact for Migration in expanding safe and regular migration pathways. I want to conclude my remarks by just mentioning that Canada will continue welcoming newcomers who bring the skills our economy needs to grow and recover from the global pandemic. Economic immigration helps Canada to stay competitive and to attract talent from around the world. Immigrants bring unique skill sets, innovative ideas and global experience, which help your economy and our society. In turn, Canada provides an opportunity for migrants to apply their skills, talents and make meaningful contributions. Thank you so much. Thank you. And I just want to acknowledge how forward-leaning Canada has been in identifying durable solutions and making this match that we're talking about here today where we're providing labor mobility pathways for displaced migrants, but it actually benefits Canadians and helps to promote Canadian economic wellbeing as well. So it's really, you're really a leader. So thank you for doing that. And obviously, as we all know, that's part of GCM objective number five. So you're living it and it's great to see. I'd like to turn now to Dr. Avneet Kaur from the Indian National Skills Development Corporation. Dr. Kaur, I'll leave it to you. Sure, thank you so much. Thanks first to IDM for organizing this absolutely brilliant and very tough section, which brings people from across the globe together. Thank you Amy for beautifully setting the context for this panel and thank you for the opening remarks. I'm part of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Government of India, National Skill Development Corporation is an agency that supports the mission of Skill India International. And I will be speaking from the other perspective. So we just heard from her in the perspective which is a destination country perspective. And of course, Canada is hailed as a global example like you also acknowledge. I am on the other side, I'm the country of origin. So when I talk about what the objective of the Skill India International mission is, I speak from the perspective of India becoming a global source for quality talent leading to global job opportunities for Indians. Also providing international career mobility opportunities for Indians who are already settled overseas and to create internationally benchmark qualifications. So those are the three broad areas that fall under the mission of Skill India International. The entire focus here is on ensuring mobility of skilled and certified workers across blue collar and white collar job roads in destination markets. So for India, the traditional markets include of course the entire GCC region. Then there is the UK and the European markets and markets with mature migration systems such as Canada, Australia, Japan and Singapore. And while we do this, while we transit this so-called business of mobility, there is of course, there are a lot of government to government partnerships in the form of these mobility agreements that you spoke about. So we have two dozen or such partnerships. We also engage at a B2B level with several other stakeholders. But the entire aim of these partnerships and these engagements is to ensure that they are creating value for all stakeholders in this process. And the key stakeholder is of course, the candidate herself. So from a candidate's perspective, we want to make sure that they are most importantly skilled and certified. They have the requisite orientation in terms of the culture, any foreign language that they need to get updated with before they move to the destination country, light skills and general orientation and counseling, which is very critical. And most importantly, like I said earlier as well, we want to make sure that it's only skilled and certified people who undertake these mobility opportunities. So that once they are in the destination country, there is, they're not at a loss. They are treated at par with the others. Second is also to make sure that there is value here for the employer because at the end of the day, it's a business for the employer. They are seeking employees who are able to fulfill certain tasks. So the employer should feel that there is value in the entire recruitment and placement facilitation process. They have the available skills sets here. And there's also some support in the form of visa rebates that some countries have introduced to encourage employers to hire skilled and certified candidates from certain countries. And finally for the government of India, it enables us to achieve social and economic impact to improve the incomes of migrating workforce and remittance transfers, of course, and opening up of new markets for skilled migrant workers through pilot implementation and scaling up. So NSDC has undertaken several initiatives and one such is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where we did a benchmarking and harmonization exercise. So this becomes very significant when we speak about mobility. This ensures that the standards are recognized between the two countries and introduces a sort of level playing field and mutual acceptance at various levels. One is, of course, there is the technical acceptance, but with technical acceptance also comes the added things about social acceptance, et cetera. You can really link this with many other dimensions. So we have undertaken this exercise with, like I said, with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where we have benchmarked around 20 odd qualifications between the two countries and this eases the mobility process. We have undertaken this exercise with several other countries, but it's mostly in the stage of certain pilot projects that are being implemented right now. So some of the challenges, and I'll end with that, that some of the challenges that we face as a country of origin is in terms of legal pathways for mobility, so that there is not enough that is available from the perspective of India for people to migrate to different countries. And it's also very complicated. So easing some of those restrictions, making sure that there is enough awareness and this information is readily available. And there's a lot of work that we have to do at a G2G level to make sure that the bottlenecks are eased and correct information is disseminated. Second is the mutual recognition of standards, both in terms of skills and education. And third is something that we spoke about earlier as well during one of our internal sessions, sharing the burden of the costs, because in this case, it's not only the burden on the country of origin to make sure that the candidates have the required skill sets, have the required life skills, the foreign language skills, the technical skills, because at the end of the day, they are actually contributing to the society and the economy of another country. So I think it's only fair and it makes sense that both countries, the respective countries are able to participate in ensuring that the candidates undergo the right training and acquire the right sort of cultural dimensions that they need to live a fruitful life in the destination country. And at present, these things are extremely expensive. So if there is a need for international assessment and certification, the kind of rates that are charged by some of the international assessment and certification agency, the Boller rates don't really work well in the context of developing countries. So we really need to look at partnerships where they are able to set up institutions within India, for instance, in partnership with an organization such as NSDC that would ensure that one, there is real access and two costs are also reduced and ease mobility in a lot of different ways. So there are a lot of innovative options that need to be considered to make sure that it is a level playing field that the politics, the economics and from a social perspective, everything is tied well together. So thank you. I'll stop there and look forward to the rest. Thank you so much. And of course, the NSDC is a really great example of how we can use public-private partnerships to make sure that workers are trained and that they have the skills they need in order to really take advantage of the opportunities offered by employers. And of course, this is a great example of GCM objective number 18. This is where we get the mutual skills recognition so that the skills certification is really a critical piece to making this all work. I'd like to now give the floor to Helen Demster at the Center for Global Development. Go ahead Helen, the floor is yours. Well, thank you very much. Good morning, good afternoon and many thanks to the IDM for having me here, especially for an all female panel, which I'm always excited to be on. So as Deputy Director Pope mentioned, I've been asked to talk to you today about skills mobility partnerships and how better aligning skills development and migration can contribute to development in countries of origin. So skills mobility partnerships can take many forms and have many different names, though at their heart there's an emphasis on better linking skills development and countries of migrant origin and migration itself. So they definitely aim to realise the goals of the global compact for migration, promoting safe, orderly and regular migration pathways and providing migrants with decent work opportunities both at home and aboard. So typically these partnerships involve five different components. Firstly, formalised state cooperation. Secondly, multi-stakeholder involvement. Thirdly, training. Fourthly, skills recognition. And finally, migration or mobility. So in my mind this focus on increasing skills within countries of origin is very welcome. For too long, countries of destination have neglected to place a strong focus on the development impact of their migration pathways. Many turn to remittances, pointing out the incredible development power of financial skill and technological transfers that migrants send home. Yet I would argue that solely relying on remittances is not enough for two main reasons. Firstly, they do little to combat brain drain, a frequent and justifiable concern of countries of origin, especially within sectors with a shortage of skilled personnel like healthcare. Secondly, countries of origin are realising the strong bargaining power that they have in these negotiations. If countries of destination are to secure skilled personnel to meet labour shortages, they need to give something meaningful back. There are of course many different ways to enhance the development impact of migration pathways and better linking them with skilled development is an excellent way to go. Within the context of these pathways, countries of destination should seek to financially and technically support whatever development aims the country of origin has. This could be things like investing and training and education systems, upgrading curricular and skill recognition, supporting the development of migration management systems, policies or data, buying equipment and upgrading physical infrastructure, experimenting with schemes to encourage the recruitment and retention of workers or providing general aid and budget support for other priorities. Such a focus definitely helps build a partnership of truly equal partners and encourages better state cooperation between countries of origin and destination. So one way to do this is through implementing a global skilled partnership. The global skilled partnership model was invented by my CGD colleague Michael Clements back in 2014. We worked very closely with the drafters of the global compacts of migration to get this link between skills and migration recognized in objective 18. And as a result, global skilled partnerships were one of the only concrete policy recommendations included within the global compact. Essentially, a global skilled partnership is a bilateral labor migration agreement between equal partners. So the country of destination agrees to provide technology and finance to train potential migrants with targeted skills in the country of origin before they move. And they then get migrants with precisely the skills they need to integrate and contribute best upon arrival. The country of origin provides that training but they also get support for the training of non-migrants as well which increases rather than drains human capital. So the defining feature of the global skilled partnership model is what we call the dual track approach. Basically at the start or during the training, trainees can pick which track they want to go down. They can stay in the home track for non-migrants or the away track for migrants. Those who choose to stay are plugged back into the local labor market with increased skills and earning potential. This helps ensure that the country of origin benefits from a brain gain rather than a brain drain. Those who choose to move obviously also have these increased skills and earning potential and they also have the ability to migrate legally and safely. They could also be provided with additional training and soft skills, things like languages or other facets of integration. Of course, circularity could also be encouraged as part of this model, further contributing to brain gain. The global skilled partnership model is being trialed around the world. Belgium has been using the model to train ICT talent across North Africa. Australia is using it to train for a variety of vocational skills in the Pacific Islands. Germany is designing construction and engineering partnerships with a number of countries of origin across the globe. And recently we worked with the World Bank to design a number of global skilled partnerships with Nigeria, many of which we expect to be implemented soon. Now my final point is to say that in the implementation of this model, we're learning a lot. How to choose partner countries and which sectors to work in. How to bring all partners on board, both substantively and financially, especially the private sector and employers. How to work across government departments, countries and a range of different entities to try and align priorities and objectives. How to pilot, test, monitor, evaluate and scale the model. So I'd be very happy to go into depth on any of these points in the Q&A but please do get in touch if you would like to learn more. And thank you again very much for having me here. Thank you so much. I think this is really exciting work that you're doing and we'll definitely ask you a few questions about how it plays out in real life to follow up. Now is the exciting part of the conversation. We go from presentations to engagement. And so I do welcome folks who are listening in. If you're interested in having been part of this conversation, please do feel free to join it. I'm going to exercise my prerogative as the facilitator to start the conversation. And if you don't mind Assistant Deputy Minister Jarvis, can you say a bit more about how migration systems can be better leveraged so that we can serve migrants or refugees who have special protection needs and make sure that those needs are recognized and respected even as they're being put into these partnerships to where their skills can be further developed or contributed to the economy. Well, thank you so much for that question. It's a good one and an important one. I think what we're really looking towards are the establishment and creation of complementary pathways. And I spoke about one which is really leveraging the skills and the experience of refugees to come as economic immigrants, but there are certainly other pathways, whether as students coming forward or through private sponsorship that Canada has had in place for some time. But I think it's also really the emphasis and availability of regular pathways because I think what we all see is there are refugees who do not have a durable solution, who have fled persecution and are seeking protection. We also have economic migrants that are on the move that sometimes find themselves in situations that actually turn into what we would almost associate as fleeing persecution and in need of protection. And so leveraging the existing economic pathways is also a really important part of the solution. And so I thought what Helen was speaking about, that kind of upskilling is helpful as part of that brain gain, but it also allows access to a greater number of regular pathways without upskilling. So there are multi-faceted pieces of this solution, but I think complementary pathways along with our regular pathways are really important. And I want to just touch on the other end of the spectrum very briefly is that settlement integration which really allows the successful upskilling of language of finding jobs, of support for families, for education that further enhances that experience. So really across the whole continuum. Oh, your comment, even as we were preparing for this discussion about the importance of language was really critical. And we see that play out around the world without language skills, we see much, the success of these programs is really much more difficult. So that's a useful sort of takeaway I thought from some of Canada's experience here. If I could ask Dr. Cower, could you just say a little bit more about how you're engaging with the private sector? I mean, how do you really anticipate what skills? How do you make sure you have this cooperative relationship? Just if you don't mind us, maybe even taking a real life example of where it's worked so that we can have a kind of very practical sense of how this can play out elsewhere. Oh, thanks. I think that's an important question. At the end of the day, when we talk about migration of skilled and certified workers to destination countries, they need to be employed. And so we are without a proper linkage with the private sector where this discussion is incomplete. The first step towards that is the traditional way of conducting a study. So we've had a global skill gap study that was conducted a couple of years ago that mapped the opportunities for Indian migrants across 15 to 20 top countries in the coming few years across sectors and job roles. So that was more of a macro view of where the opportunities are to enable us to prepare on the supply side. The second is that we are in the process of actually doing a more detailed micro level study across identified countries. So again, we have identified 15 to 20 potential countries for Indian migrants where we are expecting to see results in two to three months actually. And this would focus on various aspects. One, of course, who are the large employers? What are the jobs? What are the sectors? What are the skillsets that are required? Foreign language requirements and the usual things. What are the immigration pathways? So this is the level two information where we are trying to talk directly with the employers, with the recruitment agents in the destination countries to understand what their needs are and then how can we collaborate to fulfill those needs? And like I said, it has to be that was really important what Helen mentioned as well, that it has to be a collaborative exercise between the two countries rather than for the country of Urijit to try to completely understand what the requirements are and to meet those requirements. So that's how we are for now engaging with various partners. And just as an example, as a live example, so we are working with this organization in Western Australia. It's called Birdman Global Services and they are immigration consultants and recruitment agents there. So we have a requirement of 500 skilled people that they need from India across future roles. They are the ones who are getting in touch with the employers. We are managing the supply side from here. So advocacy awareness, sourcing the right candidates, ensuring they have the required training, making sure that the very expensive certification is also in order. That's the part that, and of course, in the mile of immigration, the documentation, et cetera. So we are working with this organization. We've tied up, we have an MOU with this Birdman Global Services in Australia where this is a live project, one of the live projects that we are working on. That's great. That's really useful. If I could turn to Ms. Dempster for a moment. So I love this idea of brain circulation and of course we know Michael Clemens well in the concept of the Global Skills Partnership.  I mean, I think we have a great sense of what you're doing in terms of training and matching but then in terms of contributing back to the origin country, lessons learned or examples of where it's worked really well. That'd be super. Thanks. Yeah, of course. Hopefully it was clear from my remarks that I would say the Global Skills Partnership model is not necessarily trying to facilitate either temporary or permanent migration. This is down to the desires of the country of origin and the country of destination. Personally, I would say that if there are large shortages within professions on both sides and if the country of destination has invested years and substantial financial capital to be able to train people then it probably makes sense to try and encourage permanent migration as part of that scheme. Otherwise, it might seem like a more of a political difficulty to argue for the justification of that scheme politically at home. But there's no reason why you couldn't look to some form of partnership which is more of a long-term, temporary partnership and there are many countries that are doing this. For example, Northern Australia at the moment is training aged care nurses in the Pacific Islands and they will be eligible for a three-year visa in Australia before returning back home to their country of origin. So different countries have employed different models. In terms of the sort of tangible benefit to the country of origin that you mentioned, I think probably quite one of the best examples we have at the moment is the partnership between Belgium and Morocco. This project which was called Parlim, I can send you through more details has been implemented over the last couple of years. The aim there was to try and train 120 young Moroccans. These were people who were unemployed, people who didn't have any previous ICT skills but were interested in working in the ICT field. Belgium paid for the training of these people within Morocco. They worked on a nine-month training program and a number of digital skills that were in need both in Morocco and in Belgium and this is the critical part of the model. At the end of the scheme, the aim was that 40 of these young Moroccans would move to Belgium and these 40 were chosen through a competitive selection process by Belgian companies. Simultaneously, there was also a competitive selection process by Moroccan companies of the other 80 graduates. Now, unfortunately, COVID disrupted the actual migration part of this program and they finished their training just as COVID kicked off and the board is closed. But thankfully, Belgium was able to both secure more employment of some of these graduates and also eventually facilitate the migration of some of these people after a few years after COVID calmed down a little bit. They're now expanding that program across the entirety of North Africa so there will be two to 300 trainees across Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt in ICT skills. The final thing I'll note in terms of contribution to the country of origin is that the skills that are trained for do not have to be exactly the same. So it may be that say Belgium needs, let's pretend data engineers that require a two year long degree, whereas Morocco requires specialists that only maybe require a nine month degree. This is not exactly the same skill and it's not exactly the same thing that needs to be trained for. But the best part about this type of model is that Morocco will receive financial support for the training of those IT specialists that will stay in Morocco, even if the training programs that those people go on are completely different. It's about trying to build the global stock of skills within certain professions that are in demand everywhere to help people find opportunities both at home and abroad. And again, there are many other lessons that we're learning. It would take far too much time to get into all of them now and I do encourage people to get in touch if they would like to learn more. Thank you, that's really terrific. So I see we have some participants who are interested in engaging, which is terrific. If I could just ask for the sake of time if folks contributing could not exceed one or two minutes so that we have a little bit of time at the end for our panel to react, that'd be terrific. I have a few that have already asked for time even before the meeting started. So if I could turn first to Joel, Digi from the International Trade Union Confederation in Africa. Joel, the floor is yours. Joel is unfortunately not connected. Okay, then that allows us to go directly to Leila O'Kane from MC Burning Glass. Leila, are you on? I am, can you hear me? Great, the floor is yours. Perfect, thank you so much for having me. So what I wanted to talk about today is a little bit about how you can measure some of these skills gaps and understand some of the skills that are needed across different countries to better understand sort of the skill mobility prospects. So I work at a company called MC Burning Glass where a labor market analytics company. And I wanted to talk a little bit about how big labor market data can complement traditional sources of labor data to understand skills in a more granular way and to measure some of these labor shortages. So big labor market data, when I say that what I mean is online job posting data, social profile data, other data that is sort of parsed and scraped from online sources that can give a real-time granular insight into the skills that are being demanded in the labor market and supplied in the labor market. And one of the things that this can provide for you is a very sort of localized look at what skills are particularly in demand. So you can see, for example, within an occupation, within a city, what are the skills that are being primarily demanded by employers and that can kind of help inform some of that skills building policy work. And in particular, you can also, so one of the things we've kind of seen to jump off of Helen's points about ICT skills is that pretty much all jobs, especially in the US and other economies require some baseline level of digital skills. And so including digital skill building, even if that is sort of just basic digital literacy, how to use a computer is really transferable across a wide range of occupations. For example, even in the construction sector, we're seeing that people are relying more on digital skills, more on using things like AutoCAD or other 3D tools in manufacturing. People are relying on digital skills to help understand where in the manufacturing process different components are using iPads to kind of track and log some of those processes. And so this isn't sort of relegated only to office jobs but it's happening across many, many sectors and that's something that we see in our data. And I also wanted to speak just briefly about how you can use some of this big labor market data to track shortages in the labor market. So there are a couple of different indicators that we have seen that can help indicate different levels of shortages. One of them is if employers start to offer things like a signing bonus or a starting bonus or a immediate pay upon start, that can kind of indicate, hey, we don't have enough people in the pipeline for this, we really need folks to join this industry or the sector. And that's something we've been seeing in particular in the US in healthcare, in agriculture and in construction, which are sectors that I know that are relevant for many migrant populations. Other indicators that we have seen also include advertising, the salary. So in the US that's actually sort of an uncommon occurrence to put salary information directly in a job posting. But if employers kind of start doing that increasingly, that can indicate that they're trying to be more transparent, trying to widen that applicant pool by saying, hey, this is exactly how much you're going to make if you take this job. We're also seeing a decrease in requiring a bachelor's degree for some position. So removing that bachelor's degree requirement and focusing really on specific skills that talent might need to have that position can allow for a wider range of applicants to be eligible for that and can be another indicator that employers are feeling the effects of a labor shortage and wanting to be able to have more people able to apply to that position. So I just wanted to mention that these are some of the things we're seeing with our data and we would really recommend as a compliment to some of the more traditional sources of labor market data to potentially look into some of the ways big labor market data, including online job postings and social profiles data can kind of help paint a deeper picture of this skills situation and help policymakers understand where labor shortages might be happening. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Layla. That was really, really useful. I appreciate it. Casey Myers, One Digital World. Do you want to jump in here, Casey? I guess, thank you. Thank you for having me. So I'm Casey Myers. I am the executive director and founder of One Digital World. We are a nonprofit based in California in the USA, although we work internationally. And so our goal is to connect, educate and empower refugees and asylum seekers worldwide through digital skills and access to technology. Originally we had started by doing this in Europe where I'd worked with other organizations providing digital literacy and ESL classes through setting up computer labs inside refugee camps and have done this through multiple islands, it threw out the Mediterranean. And then in the last few years have been working along the US-Mexico border in Tijuana with different migrant shelters there. And often I found we're really seeing a lot of the same issues. And so as they come through these border regions we're seeing refugees and asylum seekers then being detained for months to years in migrant shelters in refugee camps while they go through this processing. And then after looking very much forward to resettlement upon resettlement often don't receive the services that they need in order to fully integrate and be successful and self-sufficient in a new country and new culture. Our research shows us that even with services it takes on average seven years for newcomers to integrate. And again, we're seeing many places where they're not receiving these services. So already because of migration are being forced to overcome disruption in education, disruption in employment and adjusting to new skills being required in a different labor market and a different culture. So the biggest barriers that we have seen in our work would be language barriers, reskilling to the new labor market. And often although there are resources for providing these new skills, we see a lot that there's not the very basic introductory level. So maybe there may be more advanced online resources. These have increased during COVID-19 and the pandemic as we see more remote access but a lot of introductory level is missing. Lack of transportation is a huge barrier to people moving into new destination countries. And therefore when they do not have access to computers and the internet, have no way to be able to attain what resources are available. Women we do see facing additional barriers are disproportionately affected by lower rates of education and employment due to cultural needs and often childcare. So when available we wanted to provide that service to increase access to women. We've seen huge, huge success in that. Now our goals are to focus on SDGs number four and 10. So empower with skills and knowledge, language for joining the community, healthcare access. I put that mention and that's so important. Legal services so that people can have the state of mind that they are not focused on whether they'll be able to access their human rights and safety. Employable skills for self-sufficiency. Based on our research and experience it's our recommendation for private and public sectors to invest in the following. Diversity, equity and inclusion services. So employing a diverse workforce incentivizing both private and public to do that. Employment authorization needs to be faster and done correctly. We recently received many resettled Afghan nationals. However, they faced huge barriers when gaining access to employment authorization and visas to be able to find employment which then creates a under the table workforce leaving no opportunity to receive legal payment. And therefore also not to be able to benefit and pay into the economy of the destination country. Following up with what Leila had mentioned before we also noticed a need to increase a focus on hiring based on skills and not just degrees. Lastly, we want to provide integration training language and basic skills training to get the best employees to invest in the future of the company and its employees. So the world has been facing the largest refugee crisis since World War II for the past six consecutive years. And as countries around the world continue to see increases in forced migration, whether that be large skill displacement or reception of migrants, all nations must work together to provide the necessary resources to protect both migrants and the welcoming communities. It's of great benefit to receive skilled workers and to increase competition in the labor market and therefore invest in corporations and governments alike. Migration can be one of the greatest assets to both the community and the economy. Thank you, Casey. I see that the vice minister of Venezuela is very patiently waiting. If I could give him the floor now, vice minister. Good morning. Good morning. And greetings. Greetings to all the participants and delegations invited from Venezuela would like to thank you for celebrating this event to deal with the permanent issue of migration. Venezuela, historically, has always been a country, a definition country for migrants. But in the recent years... So Venezuela has traditionally been a country that hosted migrants. And despite the unilateral coercitive measures that in consequence has given in the Venezuelan people a degradation of its socioeconomic conditions accelerating and increasing migration of qualified citizens. It is a situation directed to weakening the public policies and the capabilities of productivity for the people. For Venezuela, once this condition has been affirmed, it is important to promote the policies to promote and to encourage the comeback of our migrant workforce and qualified migrants who left the country temporarily due to economic reasons. And they will come back to the country with important additional skills for the best outcomes of the socioeconomic conditions of the country. Therefore, we had adopted the objectives of the GCM for a safe, orderly and regular migration, the Sustainable Development Objectives 2030, the Countries Plan 2025 and the Missions and Great Missions Plan. In this regard, due to the right to the migrants to come back and the protection of our citizens who are vulnerable, the Bolivarian government of the Mr. Nicolas Maduro model president has implemented the comeback to the country plan, which has drew the attention of a long, a great number of nationals, including the qualified migrants. In 2021, we managed to have an economic growth in Venezuela and in this year of 2022, we are thinking to really, we are advancing to increase this growth, building progressively the right conditions to encourage the comeback to our country of our citizens who had been outside, who had had to migrate, really attracting them with their creation of employment, the increase of the purchase power of the workers from Venezuela. In summary, to put an end to the adverse factors of structural nature that had encouraged our citizens to leave the country in Venezuela. Through the Bolivarian Revolution, we are constructing and building up better social and political stability conditions for all the people and to encourage the comeback of our migrants and nationals and to allow them to have the right and dignified inclusion without any distinction to move forward in the highest happiness of the whole society. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your intervention. I now have Tome Konga, the deputy director general for migration and foreign service in Angola. Deputy director general, the floor is yours. We see that for the immigrants who come here, the country divides the expression of Portuguese in Angola in a very specific way. When they have to move to Canada, for example, which is a country that offers more sufficient conditions for the immigrants, they leave the Portuguese language, it is necessary that the country, the sector, integrate this immigrant within the Canadian society. Without thinking that he has the knowledge of Portuguese, he must be included within the society. This happens with us in Angola, because, as we know, Angola is a country with a lot of interest in the integrated and permanent territory of the foreigners who entirely prevail in the reach of all the citizens of the country. This is without any diversity, without any discrimination. Only the foreigner enters, after being a member of the society, and when his insertion into the Portuguese language can be integrated into socially useful activities in which he is qualified. If you take the opportunity to think that he has the qualification that he brings from his country, it will not be possible. We understand what the world has to do with the ease of regular immigration and access to rights. It will not be possible. I think we, the countries in the sectors with greater valence or greater advantage for immigrants, think about this and think about socializing the citizens who support their countries. We could move forward with other aspects, but I think that the other aspects we can present in the conclusions that are very important. We hope that we will write later. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Deputy Director, for your engagement. I now ask the Ambassador from Sri Lanka, Mohan Kiers. Thank you, Panel, for giving me the floor. Since migration of Sri Lankan labor to other countries became a trend in 1980s onwards, Sri Lanka has focused on skills development as a means to add value to migrant labor, as well as enhance the overall quality of migrant labor. Skills development is also a means to reduce irregular migration and the vulnerability of migrant labor. The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment conducts a number of training programs for migrants prior to departure, including in language training, possible workplace hazards and briefings on the culture and etiquette of the destination country. These measures, we believe, have over the years contributed to a qualitative improvement in the skills of our migrant labor. This also includes a framework to conduct training and skills development, targeting emerging markets. A project proposal is also underway to enhance the existing recognition of prior learning programs. It is also known as RAP. The project proposal under consideration aims to provide a skills passport, if we were to call it, based on national competency standards and aims to develop a skills pool. Sri Lanka is also pleased to be actively involved as chair of the thematic area working group on skills and qualifications recognition process of the Kalambo process. The sixth meeting of the thematic area working group, virtually in May of 2021. Now, some of the key achievements of this working group include promoting the mutual recognition of skills and qualification frameworks within the Kalambo process member states and between the Kalambo process member states and countries of destination. Madam Chair, within the framework of the Abu Dhabi dialogue, Sri Lanka also contributed as part of the trika to the thematic workshops on migration governance, challenges, skills, mobility partnerships and sharing of data, employment opportunities for women in a changing employment landscape and regional and inter-regional cooperation and coordination. We urge that the international dialogue and migration takes into focus the achievements of such regional processes which serves to realize the objectives of the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration. I thank you. Thank you very much, Ambassador. May I ask Umahan Bardak from the European Training Foundation to join the conversation. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I wanted to say different things in different moments of the discussion. Now coming to the end, I'm probably the last speaker. I would like to say only maybe two or three points The first thing is labor and skills shortages are a fact everywhere. We shouldn't forget that skills mismatch, labor shortages, skills shortages are the common problem not only in the developing economies or destination countries but also in the countries of origin. It's becoming increasingly acute and there are already studies which estimates that the next decade will be identified by dramatic skills shortages especially for medium-skilled workers in middle-income countries. So this is my first point which brings me that for the need for more transparency and labor market information on skill needs, not only in the destination countries I think it should be more systematic both on destination but also origin countries because this is the only way we can know the skill surpluses or skill shortages in a context which should be the starting point for any skills mobility partnership. The second point is that yes, we hear more and more skills mobility partnership although its implementation is still quite limited. In fact, we as experts and international organizations are always more excited about skills mobility partnership than the national authorities at least for the destination countries I'm talking about. There are also many other let's say strategies followed. I can tell you already that from European perspective automation is already one of them and there is an increasing emphasis on automating different aspects of jobs not only in manufacturing but also services in agriculture and we have to keep in mind these trends as well as well as also the new trend of companies starting their migrating their jobs from offline to online formats and increasingly tapping the global talent through websites. I think that we need to think mobility in a broader perspective in that sense. Coming to my last let's say point is that at the end of the day, if we want to have more equitable benefits of countries of origin and destination, I think there is a need for a dramatic increase of investment in human capital development and increasing the skills pool in general in all countries. This is particularly for the sending countries, traditional countries of origin. In particular, maybe in specific shortage skills like digital skills. For example, everyone knows that it's a shortage not only in the US or in Europe but also in the many emerging economies. So what is needed is maybe reorienting already existing human capital investments also in terms of development assistance towards more let's say meaningful areas, sectors or skill parts so that this can be linked with the mobility. And maybe one last point, again, this is really my last sentence is I see increasingly that if we want to make skills mobility partnership more than just the project, I think we need more professional players here in terms of international labor and skills intermediation. I know that there are already companies head hunting agencies, et cetera. Also international companies especially for the high skill but we need a bit more innovative type of intermediation which includes services of skills, audit, validation and recognition and as well as skills partnership not only simple job placement but more broader package of services at the international level but doing this more professionally not done in a project life but rather in a more professional way with one bill of the cost, let's say which can be easier for companies to engage with. I stop here, thank you. Thank you very much. I understand we have Kelso Carvalho from the Food and Agricultural Organization who'd like to take the floor. Can I turn it over to you? Thank you very much, moderator. Migrants play a critical role in the agri-food systems. The pandemic has served to highlight how indispensable migrant workers are in that regard. Agriculture has many particularities such as the seasonality of work and peaks in labor demand and challenges such as weather conditions and physically demanding work. Meeting labor demands requires mechanisms to recruit and deploy enough workers with the right set of skills to respond timely to employer's needs while at the same time protecting the rights of migrant workers. There may be few incentives for employers to invest in skills development of migrant workers due to the short term of stay and the nature of seasonal employment. Multisaisional employment of agricultural migrant workers can offer migrants opportunities to acquire experience and improve their skills each season while the employer has a secured labor force for the successive agricultural seasons. Skilling migrant workers can also be included in pre-departure and post-arrival training as part of a broader labor migration agreements to address labor shortages. It should also be considered that skills developed at destination can be applied in countries of origins when workers return home. Thank you. In agriculture, applicability is determined by the access to the same technologies as abroad. Availability of identical crops in the country of origin access to land and plans to continue working in the agricultural sector upon return. Policymakers should assess the challenges and opportunities in relation to the most suitable and realistic skills development options for agricultural migrant workers considering their short stay and the varying degree of skills applicability upon their return home. Thank you, madam. There we go. Sorry, I couldn't unmute. I have one... You're muted again, sorry. That work now? Yes. We have one last speaker and that is IOM's good friend and former chairperson of our council, Ambassador Garcia from the Philippines. Ambassador, could I turn it over to you? Yes, thank you so much. I'm just jumping in here quickly. You already heard from undersecretary Ariola. She's given you all the policy and practical angles. I just would like to, number one, convey my deep appreciation continuing for the IOM and for you, Amy, DDG Amy Pope, for your continuing commitment. You've been at it forever and the migration week was an important thing. I think one critical element here is the capacity of international organizations to work together on migration questions. This is very important. It does away with the stovepipes that used to