By Marzia Rango, Data Innovation and Capacity-Building Coordinator at the Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC), IOM – UN Migration, and Michele Vespe, European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), Demography, Migration and Governance Unit, Big Data for Migration Alliance (BD4M)
Now more than ever we need to invest in responsible data innovation for the analysis of mobility and migration

The impact of COVID-19 on the production of migration statistics around the world has been severe, particularly across low- and middle-income countries. In Africa, where national population censuses and household surveys are the main sources of data on migration, travel restrictions, lockdown measures and closure of government offices have heavily affected the ability to collect data from these sources, delaying the (already infrequent) production of migration statistics. The same has occurred in some European countries. And even in countries that were able to switch to remote modalities for data collection, challenges persisted, particularly in terms of the quality of data. Meanwhile, only just over a third of the 47 African countries surveyed in May 2020 reported using sources other than traditional ones.
One of the UN Secretary General report’s (“From Promise to Action: The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration”) key recommendations is to ‘strengthen evidence-based discourse on migration.’ But how to do so when even basic facts about migration in many countries around the world are largely unknown, because capacities to collect, or properly analyse and disseminate reliable statistics are extremely modest? And when a global pandemic further limits the availability of data from traditional sources?
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