The private sector has an essential role to play in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, and therefore it is significant and timely that the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) organized a roundtable discussion on “Mainstreaming Migration in the SDG Agenda in the Indian Context”.

The roundtable was presided over by A Dardar Singh, Secretary General of FICCI. Singh has also been central to the establishment of a FICCI Taskforce on International Migration and Diaspora. With the support of the ILO and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Federation brought together a broad range of government agencies, think tanks, UN agencies, NGOs and academia to ensure that migration is given due prominence in the SDG discussions in India.

The discussion began by noting how the landscape had changed in recent years. The Millennium Development Goals did not include goals or targets on migration, but there is now acknowledgement in the Declaration on the 2030 Agenda of the “the positive contribution of migrants for inclusive growth and sustainable development”.

Migration touches upon several of the SDGs, and effectively managed migration will also be an enabler for achieving goals on poverty reduction and economic growth, education, health and gender. From an ILO perspective, the most relevant targets on labour migration are Target 8.8 on decent work for all, including migrant workers; 10.7 on safe and regular migration; and 10c on remittance costs. While there is an established methodology for measuring progress under Target 8.8, more work is needed on the indicators for 10.7 – on recruitment costs and on effective migration policies. It was noted that India has made significant progress on reducing remittance costs already. The Government of India may also consider additional national or regional indicators on migration that are particularly relevant to the country.

The intersection between migration and the goals and targets on education, health and gender was emphasized in the discussions. This underscores how important it is to mainstream migration into development planning processes.

Other presenters argued for migration to be elevated among the priorities of the Government of India. There is a dearth of accurate, timely and disaggregated data on migration, return migration and the impact that it has on development.

Next steps

NITI Aayog has been charged with the establishment of a national framework for achieving the 17 Goals. There is already a mapping of ministries as well as development programmes against the SDG targets and indicators. The role of social partners, NGOs and academia should also be considered in this mapping, which would allow them to be more prominently engaged in the discussions. There is a need to sensitize partners on the issue of migration in the context of the SDGs. Specific training and capacity-building initiatives are also being developed by the ILO — aimed at reinforcing the capacity of its constituents to position themselves in this process.

Discussions will continue with NITI Aayog, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) and other relevant partners on the scope for designing and piloting methodologies for the indicators on recruitment costs (10.7.1) and labour migration policies (10.7.2), and additional indicators that India may want to track. Support can also be provided to establish a baseline and monitoring of progress towards the SDGs; and to analyze and discuss the data to support evidence-based policymaking.

As India is seemingly a world leader in reducing remittance costs in certain corridors, the measures taken should be documented and shared with other countries that have ambitions to bring down these costs.

The key discussion points will feed into a FICCI meeting in December 2016 on the SDGs .