Secretariat - Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities

The Athens Ministerial Council Decision on Migration Management (MC.DEC.05/09) encourages the OSCE participating States to continue to work on migration management by “improving the collection of comparable data on migration, in order to facilitate dialogue and exchange of best practices at the OSCE level”.

The OCEEA is currently working, together with the IOM, on the project Harmonised migration data collection as sound basis for policy-making. This project aims at securing the necessary political commitment for establishing a harmonized data collection process among Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, the Russian Federation and Belarus (EurAsEc region). This will be done through the development of five country assessments, a common draft template for harmonised migration data collection, and general conclusions and recommendations for each country.

These outputs will be compiled in a handbook on migration data collection which will be presented at a regional conference in Vienna all OSCE participating States in winter 2011-2012. These presentations will seek the necessary political endorsement and financial support for the implementation of a harmonized data collection template.