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By 2025, IOM in Indonesia will have consolidated a holistic approach, inclusive of the country’s central and local governments, as well as civil society and private sector partners, to improve migration management and the protection of migrants.

The report “Accelerating Access to Remedy: Promising Practices to Enhance Access to Remedy for Migrant Workers in South-East Asia” presents an overview of the status of migrant workers’ access to remedy in Hong Kong SAR China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam, through the lens of… Read More

The Protecting Migrant Workers in Indo-Pacific Supply Chains: A Good Practice Guide for Business and Bali Process Member State (Indo-Pacific Supply Chain Guide) presents a range of good practices and scalable solutions for businesses and the Bali Process Member States to protect migrant workers… Read More

Tujuan dari Pedoman ini adalah untuk memberikan informasi kepada perekrut tenaga kerja tentang praktik terbaik untuk mempromosikan, memfasilitasi dan memastikan perekrutan etis pekerja rumah tangga migran. Pedoman ini berasal dari Standar Sistem Integritas Rekrutmen Internasional (IRIS), yang… Read More

Authored by Marika McAdam, this paper explores the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on labour migration and mobility of young women and girls in South-East Asia and the Pacific.

This policy brief examines the relationship between migration, environment and climate change in coastal areas in Indonesia, where over 70 per cent of the population lives in low-elevation coastal zones (LECZs). Hydrometeorological phenomena – particularly sea-level rise, coastal erosion and… Read More

Supporting Brighter Futures: Young Women and Girls and Labour Migration in South-East Asia and the Pacific explores and critically examines the existing evidence base on key aspects of the topic so as to inform potential policy and programmatic responses designed to enhance labour migration impacts… Read More

Debt and indebtedness are central to the lives of migrants from South-East Asia. Indebtedness can motivate the need for migration and, conversely, migrants regularly use loans to finance costly cross-border moves. The remittances that migrants then send home are often used to repay household debt.… Read More

South Asia, comprising eight countries including Bangladesh, Maldives and Nepal, is affected by a range of natural disasters including floods, glacial lake outburst floods, storm surges, droughts, cyclones and heavy precipitation. These disasters take a huge toll as they displace thousands of… Read More

The Abu Dhabi Declaration, which was adopted by ministers from 20 countries of origin and destination recognizes that properly managed temporary contractual mobility will benefit both countries of origin and destination and improve the well-being of temporary contractual workers.  

When natural disasters strike populated areas, the toll in human lives, infrastructure and economic activities can be devastating and long-lasting. The psychological effects can be just as debilitating, instilling fear and discouragement in the affected populations. But, adversity also brings forth… Read More

Climate change and environmental degradation are predicted to displace millions of people in the coming years, either directly or indirectly. This will lead to situations wherein the human rights of such populations could be threatened.

International Migration is a refereed quarterly review of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on current migration issues as analysed by demographers, economists, and sociologists all over the world. The journal is edited at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of… Read More

Migration, climate change and the environment present a complex set of cross-cutting issues that are of growing importance for all of IOM’s activities. Since 2000, more than 750 projects have been funded and implemented worldwide in the context of IOM’s response to environmental migration. These… Read More

Human mobility is an age-old phenomenon that has become an important issue in political and development debates. However, the focus is biased towards South-North movements of migrants, while South-South migration stocks are about as numerous. This document was prepared by the ACP Observatory as the… Read More

Human mobility is an age-old phenomenon that has become an important issue in political and development debates. However, the focus is biased towards South-North movements of migrants, while South-South migration stocks are about as numerous. This document was prepared by the ACP Observatory as… Read More

Labour migration within the Pacific region has not been studied in depth despite the existing arrangements promoting the temporal movement of workers. Evidence suggests that there is a shortage of skilled and semi-skilled labour force in the region in particular professional areas, which has led to… Read More

The ACP Observatory on Migration has compiled in this thematic report thirteen background notes looking at innovative aspects of South–South migration. Based upon research carried out during three years, these documents analyse emerging aspects of migration in ACP countries. Four major approaches… Read More

South-South migration is a traditional livelihood strategy for millions of people in the global South. Despite its importance, mobility between developing countries has only recently been targeted by researchers and policymakers.

In the history of mankind, people have always migrated to cope with environmental changes. Now more than ever, the environment, the detrimental effects of climate change, and their links to migration are brought to public attention. This is of particular relevance for the African, Caribbean and… Read More

The State of Environmental Migration series gathers the expertise of researchers, students and professionals to provide an annual assessment of the changing nature and dynamics of environment- and climate-related migration throughout the world.

In 2007, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed on an ambitious goal to fast track the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015 which would transform the ASEAN region into a single market and production base. This transformation would be based on five core… Read More

In an era of unprecedented human mobility, migration from and within the Asia-Pacific region has assumed gendered dimensions, with implications for migration flows, trends and patterns. While gender roles, inequalities and relations affect who migrates, it also has significant implications for… Read More

Addressing HIV and mobility fits well within the mandate of IOM, the only international agency to deal with the entire spectrum of migrant and mobile populations during all phases of mobility. Through its HIV programme, IOM works to prevent and counter the misinformation, misunderstanding, and… Read More

Globally, the landscape of international migration has become increasingly diversified as a result of broader changes in the global economy in addition to policy shifts in recent years. Over the last 30 years, Asia has been a region of movement and migration whether first to the Gulf countries in… Read More

The consequences of climate change for migration present humanity with an unprecedented challenge. Since the early 1990s, IOM has been active in the area of migration, climate change and the environment, and has carried out programmes to address this challenge in more than 40 countries in the… Read More

International Migration is a refereed quarterly review of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on current migration issues as analysed by demographers, economists, and sociologists all over the world. The journal is edited at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of… Read More

This volume examines key aspects of the migration process that are particularly relevant in the Asian context. It looks into established concepts and theoretical propositions that have found application in other areas, particularly in the West and explores their validity and relevance in… Read More

Indonesia is the most populous and geographically largest country in Southeast Asia. It also has the second largest migrant worker population in the region.  The book looks into the context of Indonesian migrants and the remittances they send through a developmental lens. It aims to contribute to… Read More

Despite the political discourse on migration becoming an important issue in the global development agenda, the mental and physical health implications for left-behind children of migrant workers have received less attention. The current evidence base on the health impacts of labour migration, both… Read More

Human trafficking has become a global business, reaping huge profits for traffickers and organized crime syndicates, generating massive human rights violations, and causing serious problems for governments. Despite the magnitude of the problem, however, it has only recently seized policy makers’… Read More

Media coverage of armed civil conflict rarely highlights the fact that temporary migrant workers often are among the innocent civilians who suffer, as occurred during the Libyan civil war. That conflict, which began in February 2011, resulted in the displacement and evacuation of migrants on a size… Read More

The Middle East represents one of the most sought-after and competitive labour markets in the world, with an estimated 10 million contract workers in the Gulf states alone – 70 per cent of whom are Asian. 

The state plays a strong role in overseas employment programmes in the Philippines, Indonesia and Nepal, which are leading labour exporters — with more than 2 million of their workers deploying on formal temporary contracts in 2009 alone. With overseas employment a more permanent feature of the… Read More

Responding to chronic labour shortages in the oil rich Arab states in the 1970s and 1980s, some Asian states have been among the first to develop an active overseas employment or labour migration policy that seeks to provide protection to its nationals working abroad, relieve domestic unemployment… Read More

Earlier versions of the papers in this volume were presented at the "Regional Conference on Migration and Development in Asia", held in Lanzhou, China, 14-16 March 2005. The conference, hosted by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was organized by IOM and funded by Britain's Department for… Read More

This is the second volume of Labour Migration in Asia. The first volume (2003) looked at trends, challenges and policy responses in countries of origin.

Policymakers around the world are increasingly concerned about the likely impact of climate change and environmental degradation on the movement of people. This book takes a hard look at the existing evidence available to policymakers in different regions of the world. How much do we really know… Read More

This “baseline paper” investigates current “psychosocial” intervention measures, while focusing on the mental and emotional well-being of trafficked persons, examining interpretations of “psychosocial” support and constructively critiquing the efficacy and breadth of such interventions. Moreover… Read More