• Women migrants and remittances

Women migrants and remittances

This is a collection of papers that came out of an expert group meeting organised by the UNFPA and IOM meeting on 2-3 May 2006 entitled “Female migrants: bridging the gaps throughout the life cycle”. The aim was to formulate a set of recommendations for action by governments, international organisations and civil society, as a contribution to the High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development to mainstream female migrants’ needs and rights into the agenda.

Various issues were discussed at the meeting, including the growing numbers of women migrants and the contribution they are playing in maintaining their families through remittances and the empowering potential of migration, and the negative aspects associated with migration, including trafficking and exploitation.

Some of the meeting's conclusions were:

• women should have the choice to migrate or to stay in their countries of origin, unconstrained by government policies or economic necessity
• migration is on balance a positive experience for the individuals concerned, and for both countries of origin and destination
• female migration raises serious issues of human rights, family and community cohesion, social inclusion, national development priorities and international cooperation
• authorities should consider the need for new legal protections for female migrants
• IOM and UNFPA should establish a task force to define collaboration at the policy and programmatic levels on the topic of female migration

A selection of the papers presented at the meeting were as follows:

• situation and contributions of migrant women
• push factors resulting in the decision for women to migrate
• impact of female migration on countries of origin
• human rights of migrant women and international protection mechanisms
• challenges and opportunities faced by returned female migrants

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