Outgoing President of UAPS

MISTY partner and Co-I, Professor Sam Codjoe, outside the venue of the 8th Africa Population Conference in Entebbe, Uganda.

Under the theme “Harnessing Africa’s Population Dynamics for Sustainable Development: 25 Years After Cairo And Beyond,” the conference aimed to assess how Africa, 25 years after the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, can harness its unique population dynamics for sustainable development, using rigorous evidence to establish roadmaps to respond to these critical development challenges.

As outgoing president of the Union for African Population Studies (UAPS) Professor Codjoe chaired the opening ceremony and talked to an audience of nearly 1,000 participants about the rapid pace of Africa’s urbanisation. Professor Codjoe said that by 2050 the majority of citizens will out of rural areas and living in cities and he urged policymakers and all the stakeholders in Africa to come up with ways to deal with urbanization and to make sure Africans benefit from it.

How does migration fit into the Sustainable Development Goals?

Migration is a key part of our society. With around 750 million migrants across the globe, migration should be incorporated into sustainable development planning, and in particular in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is a key conclusion of a recently published article in The Lancet Planetary Health, which was the result of a workshop organized by MISTY: Migration, Transformation, Sustainability.

As the SDGs were being negotiated, many European countries were dealing with large influxes of migrants from Syria and other conflict-affected countries. The SDGs reflect the idea that migration is temporary, and that it should be planned in an “orderly, safe [and] regular” manner. Benefits from migration are mainly considered in the form of remittances to the country of origin, but this fails to recognize that migrants are often economically very active, a source of cultural diversity, and thereby significantly contribute to innovation and economic growth. Migration should be addressed as an inherent part of (sustainable) development, including in the country of destination.

Migration and sustainable cities Take SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities, for example. Many city slums are a result of people migrating to cities in search of new (employment) opportunities. This means that the social integration of these migrants into urban planning is key to creating sustainable cities around the world, and thereby achieving the SDGs.

Migration and climate change Another example is the intricate links between climate change and migration – there are currently already 25 million migrants due to weather-related disasters. To make societies more resilient and adaptable to such climatic changes in the long run, it is crucial to incorporate migration as an inherent part of managing social transformations.

This article was written by Marjanneke Vijge, Utrecht University, and first posted on the GlobalGoals project website.

Further reading Adger, W.N., Boyd, E., Fábos, A., Fransen, S., Jolivet, D., Neville, G., de Campos, R.S. and Vijge, M.J. (2019). Migration transforms the conditions for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The Lancet Planetary Health, 3(11), 440-442.

Publication news from RMMRU

The research team at the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) are delighted to share the link to the online version of their book titled “Impact of Migration on Poverty and Growth in Bangladesh”. The hard copy of the book was published in early 2019. The poverty analysis is based on a panel survey conducted by the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC) and RMMRU that interviewed the same 6,143 households in two waves with a three year interval. The book highlights that poverty of international migrant households further reduced 3% in these three years. However, the poverty status of the households is not static. 64% of the households which were poor in the wave 1 (2014) survey transitioned out of poverty during wave 2 (2017), whereas 57% of those who were poor in the wave 2 survey were non-poor in wave 1 and so transitioned into poverty between the two waves. The book is co-authored by Dr. Tasneem Siddiqui, professor of Political Science, University of Dhaka and founding chair RMMRU; Dr. Ananta Neelim, assistant professor of Economics, RMIT University, Australia; Dr. C. Rashaad Shabab, senior teaching fellow, University of Sussex and Mr. Mahmudol Hasan, Research Coordinator of RMMRU.

The web link for the book is http://www.rmmru.org/newsite/publications/e-book/.

To purchase the hard copy please contact Ashraka Saleem Trishita. Email: trishitasaleem@yahoo.com.

Please feel free to share the link with relevant readers.

Thank you

Professor Tasneem Siddiqui

University of Dhaka and

Founding Chair, RMMRU