By: Mariama Njie
The Gambia government and the International Organization for Migration held a high-level stakeholder summit on migration aimed to review the progress of the national coordination mechanism on migration and establish a work plan for 2021, held on Friday at the Sir Dawda conference center.
Dr. Isatou Touray, Vice President of The Gambia emphasized that the national coordination mechanism is a government led inter-agency platforms for all migration actors and chaired by her.
“The NCM’s work is aimed at timely addressing migration issues, mainstreaming of migration into national development plans and ensuring policy coherence. Since the launch of NCM, thematic working groups have been at the forefront of streamlining the coherent approach,” she said.
She said that the NCM has initiated The Gambia’s voluntary national review of its progress in meeting the 23 objectives of the global compact for migration.
“In taking stock of our progress through two national consultations, we had the opportunity to gather as a group and reflect on our key achievement,” Dr. Touray said.
She urged stakeholders to share their thoughts and make their voices heard saying “as we carry on this conversation in the session, keep two things in mind how do we mainstream migration more prominent and effectively as a cross cutting issue in our development plan.”
Fumigo Nagano, IOM Chief of Mission said when they initiated discussions on the NCM with the office of the vice president in early 2018, they had in a strong, coherent and coordinated approach to governing migration.
“It was against this background that we spoke with the office of the vice president, who saw a fantastic opportunity to draw from the experiences and best practices from the other side of the continent and in November 2019 NCM was born,” she said.
Dr. Desta Tiruneh, WHO country representative who spoke on behalf of UN resident coordinator said, at the UN they are increasingly viewing migration and cross border cooperation as critical to peace, security and development.
He said that the UN’s approach to migration is to priorities the rights and well-being of migrants and their communities of destination.
“In the Gambia this commitment is reflected having our own national UN network on migration. The role of the NCM is to provide a common vision for and to coordinate all this great work on migration governance by government and migration actors. As we commence the development of the NCM’s work plan, I implore you all to think of putting all the pieces of migration governance together,” he said.