THE Ministry of Home Affairs, Immigration, Safety and Security launched the national migration policy for Namibia in Windhoek yesterday.
Ministry director of visas, permits, passports and citizenship Deon Scott said the policy focuses on areas such as internal migration, cross-border trade, tourism, migration, human trafficking and migrant smuggling.
“The policy will create a conducive and enabling environment that employs best practices and adopts international and regional standards for better migration management in Namibia,” he said.
The policy aims at improving the legal regulatory and institutional framework, he said.
“Improve migration data collection, processing, and dissemination to mitigate the loopholes that lead to irregular migrants, trafficking, and forced migration,” Scott said.
European Union (EU) ambassador to Namibia Sinikka Antila said about 80 million people are forcibly displaced worldwide, with the vast majority hosted in developing countries.
“Addressing the root causes of irregular migrations will continue to be the priority of the EU,” she said.
The EU has committed to bolstering multilateralism and building long-standing cooperation, and commissioned the Southern Africa Migration Management approximately N$360 million for a four-year project focusing on some SADC countries.
“The overall objective of this programme is to improve migration management in southern Africa and the Indian Ocean.
“Through this project, the EU aims to contribute towards safe, orderly and regular migration between governments and stakeholders,” she said.
Antila said well-managed migration and mobility of people can offer substantial benefits for the count of destination and origins.
Deputy home affairs minister Daniel Kashikola said there was a need for Namibia to develop policies to put into effect the migration profiles.
“The labour migration policy was already drafted and a need existed to come up with an overarching migration policy and other areas at a broad level. It must be noted that a national migration policy for Namibia and the Namibian labour migration policy will be complementary to each other,” he said.
