Guidelines on Mainstreaming Migration into Local Development Planning 

The UN Joint Migration and Development Initiative (JMDI) has published "Guidelines on Mainstreaming Migration into Local Development Planning", which aim to assist local and regional authorities in enhancing their efforts to mainstream migration into all governance areas for enhanced policy coherence in migration and development.  These Guidelines achieve this through a set of indicators that show how migration and development-related policies interact across a non-exhaustive variety of sectors. The indicators are accompanied by straightforward questions that practitioners can answer to identify institutional, policy and intervention gaps or weaknesses in mainstreaming migration and development in their local context. 

The Guidelines’ indicators are divided into two main categories: (1) institutional arrangements and (2) policy and practice. Institutional indicators focus on measures that can enhance cooperation and coordination on migration among various actors and among local governments, while policy and practice indicators are underpinned by a strong theoretical understanding of the linkages between migration and development. Then, within each main category outlined above there are subcategories which include: mapping the local context, engagement and coordination, and implementation and sustainability under institutional arrangement and migrants and society and mainstreaming migration and displacement under policy and practice.

The last section of the indicator outlines what Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) achieving this indicator can contribute to. This linkage is important to highlight since migration affects and is affected by all areas of governance and is therefore an important phenomenon to consider across all 17 SDGs. Indeed, the recognised multi-sectoral connection between migration and the SDGs also contributes to mainstreaming as it enhances policy coherence so as to strengthen the consistency and effectiveness of migration and development efforts. Thus, the Guidelines also serve to assist local and regional authorities to measure their implementation of migration-related SDG targets, while providing relevant examples and further information to support this process. 

Read the guidelines here.