This project is designed to directly support the 2015 IDF project: Developing a Roadmap to Facilitate South-South Labour Mobility in Southern Africa.
The project will specifically support the delivery of a Regional Roadmap Validation Meeting, which is seen to be crucial for the ownership of the regional roadmap by National Ministries of Labour and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat. Additionally, this project will facilitate the development of a comprehensive multi-million dollar programme to operationalize the roadmap and facilitate South-South labour migration within the SADC region.
It is envisaged that the Validation meeting will directly assist in addressing some of the main labour migration issues confronting SADC Member States in the Southern Africa region. Such issues pertain to lack of effective data collection, analysis, reporting and exchange systems, lack of inter-institutional coordination mechanisms and inter-state/cross border cooperation, and weak capacity to develop and implement labour migration programmes tailored to each country's specific national context.
The African Union Commission (AUC)-led programme entitled, ‘Labour Migration Governance for Development and Integration in Africa: A Bold New Initiative’, of which IOM is a partner, provides an overarching framework for the implementation of significant SADC instruments. This regional IDF project will feed into this continental framework in order to guide targeted programmatic interventions within the field of labour migration in an effort to enhance and harmonise national and regional labour migration policies and practices in the Southern Africa region.