New IOM Strategic Plan: Saving Lives, Driving Solutions, Facilitating Regular- Migration Pathways

The plan will guide the Organization's activities through 2028 in delivering on the promise of safe, orderly, and regular migration. Photo: Rami Ibrahim/IOM 2021

Geneva/ N'Djamena - The International Organization of Migration launched its global five-year strategic plan aimed at delivering on the promise of safe, orderly, and regular migration while supporting the world’s most vulnerable.

The plan – which will guide the Organization's activities through 2028 – was developed after extensive internal consultations, including with migrants themselves, as well as dialogue with Member States, with other partners and other United Nations agencies.

"The evidence is overwhelming that migration benefits communities around the globe, yet climate change, conflict and growing inequality are making the migration landscape more complex and challenging,” IOM Director General Amy Pope said at the launching event of the strategic plan held 10 January in Chad's capital, N'Djamena. “This plan is designed to meet those challenges so migration can be a full and powerful force for development, prosperity and progress."

The strategic plan sets out three overarching goals:

• Saving lives and protecting people on the move, a core function of IOM's broad and global humanitarian work
• Driving solutions to displacement, with IOM combining its data and expertise to proactively address crises before they get wider and more expensive.
• Facilitating pathways for regular migration, which will help migration become safer and more orderly and dismantle the incentives for smuggling, trafficking, exploitation, and abuse.

IOM’s new global strategic plan emphasizes reducing the risks and impacts of climate change, which evidence shows is now the top driver of migration. It also aligns with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, because migration is integral to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

IOM launched the plan in Chad, a nation facing many of the complex migration trends IOM is attempting to address. Conflict in neighbouring Sudan has displaced more than 7 million people, many of whom have fled to Chad. This displacement, magnified by the effects of climate change and entrenched poverty, is a significant humanitarian crisis that needs much greater global attention.

Building on IOM 70-plus years of experience, the strategic plan applies innovative thinking and technology to help migrants, their families, communities, and societies flourish.

"There is not a corner of the globe that is not touched by, or is in some way invested in, the issue of migration,” DG Pope said. “This new Strategic Plan enables IOM to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow while enabling us to continue to do what we do best: help people in need.”

The full plan is available here.