June 15, 2019 (DIRE DAWA, Ethiopia): The Migration Programme of the Intergovernmental Authority in Development (IGAD) today closed a retreat workshop during which the staff members of the Programme components devised ways and means of synergizing efforts towards the achievement of the overall IGAD Migration Programme goal.
After a comprehensive overview of the Projects under the Programme, the team devised a tracking grid to capture the projects’ areas of intervention so as to identify overlaps and gaps. This exercise helped in visualising areas requiring closer cooperation between two or more Projects, and unravelling least covered areas.
The team also elaborated on a Programme-wide events calendar for an optimum planning of activities that feed into each other across the board at times. The retreat was also the opportunity to reflect on the current IGAD Communication Strategy and other communication tools in vigour IGAD wide.
The Director of the Health and Social Development Division, Ms Fathia A. Alwan, did open the discussions on Thursday by calling on the other Programmes under the Division for similar team building initiatives. Ms Alwan highlighted the timeliness of such a retreat ‘considering that the Migration Programme is probably the fastest growing programme currently, and with multiple development and implementing partners onboard’. She called for a unified action plan that will propel the Programme in a harmonised way.
The Migration Programme is made up of the following Projects:
- The Development Response to Displacement Impacts;
- The Free Movement of Persons and Transhumance Protocol;
- Improved Migration Governance for Safe Orderly and Regular Mobility;
- Strengthening IGAD Migration Policy Implementation;
- The Regional Migration Fund; and
- The Migrations Statistics.
The Migration Programme retreat was made possible with support from the German Agency for Development GIZ.
