Cabinet has approved the setting up of a Migration Unit within the Ministry of the Interior to develop a migration policy framework for the country. The proposed policy would, among others, regularise the stay of foreign nationals in the country and collate data on Ghanaians resident abroad. The Minister of State at the Ministry of the Interior, Nana Obiri Boahen, who made this known, said the proposed unit would co-ordinate the national activities in the area of migration with the view to "addressing the relationship between migration and development". He was speaking in Accra yesterday at the opening of a four-day African migration workshop on Understanding the Migration Dynamics on the Continent. The more than 40 scholars and graduate students from 17 North and sub-Saharan African universities and their Latin American, European and Asian counterparts attending the workshop are expected to map out the current state of international migration research in Africa, identify research strengths, gaps and priorities for future research and prepare outlines for research projects. The workshop is being jointly organised by the Centre for Migration Studies of the University of Ghana, Legon, and the International Migration Institute of the Oxford University. Nana Boahen stressed that the proposed policy was in response to government's desire to regularise the stay of the growing number of migrants in the country with the view to addressing the increasing incidence of crime. He said it was difficult to trace criminal figures among the illegal migrants or develop a comprehensive programme for them since the government did not have any data on them. For instance, Nana Boahen said only 15,000 Liberians out of the estimated 50,000 in the country had registered and expressed the worry that "the remaining 35,000 can be roaming and threatening people, but you cannot trace them". According to him, the number of unregistered foreign nationals of other neighbouring African countries could be more than that of Liberians, hence the need for a comprehensive policy to regulate their stay. Nana Boahen said the proposed policy was expected to encourage Ghanaians living abroad to regularise their stay and collate their data to inform national policy. He said an estimated three million Ghanaians lived outside the country, and noted that migration had become an integral part of livelihood strategy for most families and individuals. He said Ghana benefited from migration through remittances, with the country's private remittances hitting about $1.4 billion in 2004. However, Nana Boahen said, the country suffered from brain drain, especially in the health and education sectors. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Legon, Prof. C. N. B. Tagoe, said internal migration had fuelled population movements particularly into urban areas with the attendant human and socio-economic consequences. However, he said, data on migration flows into Ghana was "patchy, poor and unreliable", while the knowledge of both the scale and the characteristics of migration was slow. Besides, Prof. Tagoe said, "there is little systematic policy or academic attention to the various aspects of the migration-development nexus". That, he said, had led to problems in the management of migration and had not allowed Ghana to derive maximum benefits from it. Prof. Tagoe, therefore, called for a balanced debate on migration to ensure that the poor benefited from it, and tackle the negative effects of migration. Mr Stephen Castles of the International Migration Institute said his outfit wanted to research into how migration affected communities and families, stressing that migration "is an emerging field which needs a great deal of research." The Head of the Centre for Migration Studies of the University of Ghana, Legon, Dr Mariama Awumbila, said the workshop would focus on migration research in Africa, policy development and dissemination in the area of migration studies. The Director of the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana, Legon, Prof. Takyiwaa Manuh, who chaired the function, stressed the need for intensive research on migration in Africa to inform policy formulation, since doctors, historians, anthropologists and other professionals needed data on migration to guide them in their respective fields. Source: Daily Graphic