( Offre en anglais) Consultation – Oxfam Middle East and North Africa عودة إلى الفرص

Background : 

Oxfam envisions a Middle East and North Africa where people from different origins move from, through or to the region freely and are treated with justice and dignity.

To make progress towards this vision, Oxfam in MENA has set out to analyze and address policies affecting people on the move, with the aim of making these policies more consistent with new global governance frameworks, such as the Global Compact on Migration and the 2030 agenda 2030.

Shorter term results and tactics towards this goal include:

• Generate and share knowledge
• Uphold human mobility as a right and a pre-requisite for development
• Support of advocacy and policy developments and reforms
• Look at the EU agenda and its impact on people’s lives, and at government policies in the region, highlighting the human and development costs of restrictions to mobility imposed in the region

Advance the implementation of the Global Compact on Migration and the Global Compact for Refugees in the region.

Justification : 

Oxfam in MENA is looking to commission a policy brief that will start unpacking the goals and results set out above. In particular, the document will look at migration from, within and across North African countries that sit at the crossroads between the European Agenda for Migration – with its border externalization practices- and the African Union’s Migration Policy Framework and Action Plan for Africa 2018-2027, with its draft free movement Protocol.

The paper will help Oxfam teams in North Africa  as well as the Regional Platform – to position themselves on issues of migration and human mobility in the way that is most relevant for their national and regional contexts.

The paper will provide key evidence and come up with specific recommendations to enable Oxfam’s and its partners’ advocacy work to support policy developments and reforms on migration. It will also enable them to forge alliances with other civil society actors (researchers and activists) that are already working on the issue, and connect them with ongoing work in other regions. It should build on Oxfam’s added value, to avoid duplications and to find Oxfam’s unique contribution to the issue. Thus, to the maximum extent possible, it will be connected to ongoing Oxfam program and advocacy work (i.e. policy briefs developed by the Europe Migration Campaign).

Objectives : 

The brief will seek to provide policy recommendations on how can North African countries, including Morocco and Tunisia, can influence neighboring policies, particularly the European Union (EU) and the African Union’s migration agendas, navigate external pressures, and harness human mobility’s potential to foster human development, in line with the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the Global Compact on Migration.

More concretely, the brief will explore evidence of impact and policy grounds for North African countries to manage (and if needed push back on) the securitized and externalized migration agendas that influences their domestic policies.

Contextual background and draft content : 

Movements of people from, within and across North Africa take place under the heavy influence of several political processes surrounding the region:

The European Agenda on Migration: The aim of controlling and reducing people flows at whatever cost has formed the backbone of European and Member States’ migration policies over the last decades. The European Agenda on Migration approved in 2015 strengthened this approach and significantly boosted measures requiring cooperation with third countries of origin or transit for controlling migrant flows arriving in Europe. This has resulted in a broad set of practices known as border externalization[1], which include financing instruments within the European Neighborhood Policy, and the securitization of migration policies: the dominance of the security narrative has been the main driver of migration policies, with substantial impact on all other elements. Being in the front line of EU borders, North African countries have a key role to play in these policies and practices, and thus receive pressures from the EU and its

[1] The idea of externalisation of migration control describes the effort to widen the EU’s outer border control beyond its physical borders. In particular, it involves obtaining the cooperation of countries of origin and transit in the restriction of migration flows to the EU.

member states to perform it.

The African Union is also progressively shaping its own agenda on migration and displacement. It adopted its Migration Policy Framework and Action Plan for Africa 2018-2027 setting out to establish the African Migration Observatory in Morocco and a Continental Operational Centre in Khartoum to fight human smuggling and trafficking that will coordinate with the observatory in Morocco. At the same time, it has drafted its own draft free movement protocol.

The Union of Maghreb Arab States, with free movement among its objectives, continues to consider the adoption of legal instruments to facilitate free movement of persons.

In addition to the above, two relevant global frameworks provide for international coordination and a broader setting to govern human mobility: the Global Compact on for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (which Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt have endorsed) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Finally, North African countries are also developing and applying policies and practices on human mobility adapted to their specific contexts and marked by a transition from countries considered of origin and transit to, increasingly, countries of destination. It is worth mentioning that there is also significant labor migration from Egypt to  Jordan and Lebanon, as well as GCC states, which features in their foreign policies and strategies and in bilateral negotiations. These contextual features also include an increasing number of minors transiting North African countries towards Europe and the specific risks and challenges faced by migrant women.

Proposed analysis and content

Against the background described, the policy brief will look into how current international migration policies and strategies are impacting people’s lives and development patterns in North Africa, particularly in Tunisia and Morocco (and tangentially in Egypt, Libya and Algeria)

More concretely, the paper will:

• Analyze domestic migration strategies, policies and practices, and their role and function within the political economies of North African countries, to assess whether the external migration policies and agendas described above are having an impact on domestic national and local public policies and practices regarding human mobility.

Explore how the EU Migration Agenda and border externalization practices embedded in EU-third country agreements (including trade agreements) are impacting human rights, local governance, local livelihoods and/or local cohesion- thus human development as a whole, in North African countries. Ideally and to the extent possible, this impact will be analyzed from the perspective of current programmatic work in the areas of inequality, social and economic rights, governance, and women’s rights. Building on Oxfam’s key added value in this issue, the paper will use inequality as a comprehensive analytical framework, to explore whether and how stricter policies might be impacting inequalities (for example by decreasing remittances that allow many families to live above poverty, or by inducing changes in gender power relations). This analysis will also draw lessons and be built upon existing Oxfam work on the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, (summary in French here) and on EU migration policies, in general or in particular contexts, e.g. Niger)

• Assess how the different North African countries are responding to these external agendas in their domestic contexts, to seek for commonalities and differences and draw lessons on domestic policies that are actually good for economic growth, democracy and human rights in the North African context. It will pay particular attention to whether and how migrant groups could participate in policy formulation processes, as well as to legal frameworks and funding streams available to protect migrants’ rights in the three countries. This analysis will also map what non-state actors in North African countries are doing in response to external and domestic migration policies (it can draw information from internal diagnostic documents already produced in Morocco and Tunisia).

The analysis will build on evidence of impact and identified policy grounds to provide recommendations for a common policy position across North African countries to navigate external pressures regarding migration policies, to change damaging narratives and to harness human mobility’s potential to foster economic growth, democracy and human rights. Specific recommendations will address and target primarily the EU migration agenda and derived policies and seek recommendations regarding the AU migration agenda. Thus, the policy brief will contribute to unpacking how North African countries can influence neighboring policies and react to external pressures to impose certain policies and practices on them, particularly emanating from the EU’s and AU’s migration agendas. It will also provide recommendations for Oxfam’s future programing work on migration.

The policy brief will also analyze specifically how current migration policies and practices are having different effects on men and women. The gendered impact of EU migration policies will be analyzed through the lens of Oxfam and other local organizations’ existing work on women’s rights and gender justice in the region.

Deliverables : 

Core full document including:

• Executive summary
• Background/desk review at regional level and per country
• Case study per country
• Regional level/integrated analysis
• Key findings and recommendations

Suggested methodology : 

The policy brief contents will be developed through:

1. Comprehensive desk review of existing literature, reports, and policy frameworks, including information arising from existing Oxfam reports and programs in North Africa.
2. Field trips to  3 North African countries, including Tunisia and Morocco to undertake interviews to key actors – these will be essential for analyzing national contexts and the impact of border externalization practices in the development patterns in the countries, in order to influence external actors on domestic policies and practices. Local civil society organizations and stakeholders representing and working with migrants should be actively included in the analysis and formulation of recommendations, as these should serve their influencing agenda.

Joint analysis of available evidence (through A and B) to come up with the recommendations

Audience

This study will target policy makers in North African countries, including in Morocco and Tunisia as well as in the EU –and/or its member states- and the African Union.

It will also inform Oxfam and its partners’ advocacy strategies, and can feed advocacy agendas of  the academia, civil society organizations, NGOs and other activists operating in the sector of migration and displacement in North Africa

The country analysis and interviews will provide key evidence and analysis to support advocacy in country, and if it unearths significant/ new data could also be pitched to media.

Translation

The document will be developed in English and later translated into French and Arabic.

Selection process

Merits will be assessed as follows. Please, note that personal interviews might be undertaken to proper assess the proposals: