Madagascar is facing a challenging socio-economic situation. Disinvestment from international businesses has had a severe impact on the energy, transportation, and business sectors. Over the last five years, nearly 336,000 jobs—30% of the formal employment sector—were lost. These harsh realities have led an increasing number of Malagasy nationals to look for opportunities elsewhere, and international labour migration is increasingly recognized as a short- to medium-term coping strategy that can bring potential developmental gains both to the migrants themselves and to their community.
The overall goal of this project is to support the Ministry of Employment of Madagascar towards implementing labour migration programmes in the context of existing regional frameworks. These include the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Labour Migration Action Plan, SADC Regional Labour Migration Policy Framework, and Article 19 of the SADC Employment and Labour Protocol, which stipulates specific provisions on the protection of migrant workers. The International Organization for Migration, in partnership with the Ministry of Employment, will achieve this objective through the following two outcomes:
1) Practical implementation of the labour migration policies of the Government of Madagascar incorporate migrant protection principles; and
2) Madagascar’s capacity on bilateral engagement on labour migration management is strengthened.
This national labour migration project is also designed to complement the 2015 IOM Development Fund regional project ‘Developing a Roadmap to Facilitate South-South Labour Mobility in Southern Africa’ that will bring together the selected SADC Member States in order to facilitate and diversify South-South mobility arrangements with a view toward ensuring the protection of the fundamental human, labour, and social rights of the migrant workers, their families, and associated communities of origin and destination.