Vice President Bawumia Reveals Migration, Mobility High On Government Agenda

Government has stressed its commitment to issues involving migration and mobility.

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia made the pledge at a two-day international conference jointly organized by the United Nations University (UNU) World Institute for Economics Research (WIDER) and the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) in Accra yesterday under the theme, 'Migration and Mobility: New Frontiers for Research and Policy.'

He said, “Migration and mobility are major human development issues and increasingly are key facets of our increasingly globalized world.”

“It is not surprising that these issues are high on the global agenda, high on the African agenda and high on the Ghanaian agenda.”

By the diverse nature of participants at the conference, Dr Bawumia was hopeful that they would share experiences because “there is a great deal to learn in such international collaborations and research exchanges.”

The Director of UNU-WIDER, Professor Finn Tarp, indicated that the issue of migration and mobility has been extremely contentious in recent years and the refugee crisis sparked by the Syrian war had shown that policies governing international migration are in tangle.

His reason was that “Many issues are often bundled together in the public debate and it can be difficult to disentangle the various elements in the mix.”

For him, “This is not helpful, neither from a policy nor from a research perspective.”

He therefore stressed the belief that uncovering some of the key facts on internal and international migration – both voluntary and forced – can help understand the issues currently at hand.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent