Migration Profile in Fiji: Building the Capacity for Evidence-Based Policy

As a regional hub in the Pacific, Fiji is considered as an origin, transit and destination country in the context of international migration. Migration dynamics are becoming increasingly complex with growing impacts of both slow-onset and rapid-onset climate change. Efforts in addressing intersecting issues such as trafficking in persons (TIP) and a renewed focus on promoting sustainable labour mobility in the country through seasonal worker programmes with Australia and New Zealand highlight that well-managed migration is a priority for the Government of Fiji.

The objective of the proposed project is to contribute to good migration governance in Fiji. This will be achieved by promoting evidence-based migration policy and contributing to the mainstreaming of migration throughout government policy. This focus has been chosen due to the critical lack of comprehensive migration data in Fiji, which hinders the Government of Fiji in developing evidence-based policy. The project’s key outcome is “the Government of Fiji utilizes reliable and comprehensive migration data to inform policies and programmes to better manage migration” and a Migration Profile will be developed in order to ensure migration data and analysis is available to relevant stakeholders. Capacity building activities will also be delivered to enhance the knowledge and skills of government officials and relevant stakeholders in the collection, management and analysis of migration related data. This project aligns with Principle 2 of IOM’s Migration Governance Framework (MiGOF) which is “Migration and related policies are best formulated using evidence and whole-of government approaches.”