SDG 10.7.1 Recruitment cost borne by employee as a proportion of monthly income earned in country of destination is a Tier 2 indicator under the IAEG SDG Tier Classifications. Internationally data on recruitment costs have only started to be collected in recent years and there is no global database yet. In some countries low-skilled labour migrants pay fees to obtain employment contracts. This is against international conventions.
The target for this indicator is Target 10.7 which is to:
'Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies'.
Definition
The definition in the UN metadata repository for SDG 10.7.1 is:
"Recruitment cost borne by employee as a proportion of monthly income earned in country of destination”, i.e. a ratio between a cost measure and an income measure. The statistics used for the numerators and denominators for indicator 10.7.1 should be based on costs and earnings observed for the same individual international migrant worker.
Rationale
The high economic and social costs incurred by migrants are increasingly recognized as serious impediments to realizing sustainable development outcomes from international migration. A critical role of migration policies is reducing the financial costs of recruitment incurred by migrant workers seeking jobs abroad. Recruitment costs paid by migrant workers to recruitment agents, on top of the fees paid by the employers, are a major drain on poor migrants’ incomes and remittances. They divert the money sent by migrants from the family to illicit recruitment agents and money lenders. Almost 10 million people use regular channels to migrate in search of employment every year. A large number of them pay illegal recruitment fees to the recruitment agents.
High costs that migrants pay for their jobs, including recruitment fees, significantly increase risk of forced labour, debt bondage, and human trafficking, especially for low-skilled workers. Too often, migrant workers are subject to abusive practices in the workplace and pay high fees that can deplete their savings and make them more vulnerable during the recruitment and placement processes. The international community, such as through the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (4A) of the Third UN International Conference on Financing for Development affirmed the imperative to lower the cost of recruitment for migrant workers.
Policymakers should endeavour to eliminate illegal recruitment fees, and this would require effective regulation and monitoring of recruitment agencies and combating unscrupulous recruiters implemented in constructive collaboration between the sending and the receiving countries. Improving migrants’ access to information can help improve the effectiveness of migration–related policies and regulations. The recent ILO General principles and operational guidelines for fair recruitment emphasizes as one of key principles that “No recruitment fees or related costs should be charged to, or otherwise borne by, workers or jobseekers”. The indicator is meant to show the levels of costs that are still incurred by migrant workers in order to secure a job abroad, relative to the income they earn from working abroad. The recruitment costs indicator can be expressed as a multiple of the number of monthly earnings for the reporting of the indicator in order to illustrate the financial burden on the worker.
In The Migrant Integration Strategy 2017-2020 report, Action 7 states that the Department of Justice and Equality will use EU funding to support migrants to access the labour market and to promote integration activities.
Progress to Date on Action 7:
EU funding for migrant integration and employability projects is provided by the Department of Justice and Equality through the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund and the European Social Fund.
Following open, competitive calls for proposals in 2016, twenty-five projects were selected and commenced activity in 2017.
A total of €7.3 million has been awarded and projects will run from 2017 to 2020.
SDG 10.7.2 Number of Countries with Migration Policies that Facilitate Orderly, Safe, Regular and Responsible Migration and Mobility of People, information for Ireland is provided in the Migrant Integration Strategy 2017-2020 report.
According to the UN metadata repository the definition for SDG 10.7.2 is that:
SDG Indicator 10.7.2 aims to describe the state of national migration policies and how such policies change over time. The information collected seeks to identify both progress made and gaps, thus contributing to the evidence base for actionable recommendations for the implementation of SDG target 10.7. The indicator also serves for the future thematic reviews at the High-level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development.
Migrant Integration Strategy 2017-2020
The Migrant Integration Strategy 2017-2020 was adopted by Government and launched in February 2017. The Strategy provides a framework for Government action on the integration of migrants and their Irish born children across ten areas of public policy:
It also addresses cross-cutting barriers to integration, the reduction or removal of which will require action by many or all public authorities. The Strategy contains seventy-six actions to be implemented by one or more public bodies over the period 2017 to 2020.
SDG 10.7.3 Number of people who died or disappeared in the process of migration towards an International destination, data for Ireland is not available on the UN SDG Global Database.
The UN metadata repository provides the definition in the SDG 10.7.3 metadata document.
SDG 10.7.4 Proportion of the population who are refugees, by country of origin was published by the Department of Justice and Equality, with additional information from the UNHCR.
The definition in the UN metadata repository for SDG 10.7.4 is:
The total count of population who have been recognized as refugees as a proportion of the total population of their country of origin, expressed per 100,000 population. Refugees refers to persons recognized by the Government and/or UNHCR, or those in a refugee-like situation. Population refers to total resident population in a given country in a given year.
According to the UNHCR Global Trends - Forced Displacement in 2019 report there were 7,800 refugees living in Ireland in 2019. See Table 6.1.
The Immigration in Ireland Annual Review 2018 reports that the Irish Refugee Protection Programme accepted over 2,000 people into the country in 2018. Ireland has committed to providing a safe haven for up to 4,000 people under EU Relocation and Resettlement programmes.
By the end of 2018, there were 6,252 applicants for international protection living in State provided accommodation centres. These centres are funded by the Reception and Integration Agency (RIA).
More than 700 had already been granted some form of status, but they continued to live in State-provided accommodation while they looked for private accommodation. Another 226 people had deportation orders requiring that they leave the State.
During 2018, a total of 3,673 applications for international protection status were submitted to the International Protection Office (IPO). About 27% of these (1,028) came in the last quarter of 2018. These figures include relocation cases from Greece under the EU relocation programme. This was an increase of 25.5% over the 2,926 applications for refugee status submitted to the IPO in 2017. Ireland’s applications accounted for 0.5% of the EU total in 2018.
The top five countries for international protection applications in 2018 were:
The proportion of nationalities for international protection applications are shown in Figure 6.1.
| Albania | 459 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia | 450 | |||||
| Syria | 333 | |||||
| Zimbabwe | 282 | |||||
| Nigeria | 251 | |||||
| Other | 1898 |
According to the Immigration in Ireland Statistics 2018 there were 1,021 international protections grants awarded in 2018, with 582 given to males and 439 to females. People aged 18 years or over received 674 grants while 347 were to people aged under 18 years. Syria accounted for 423 of these grants, followed by Zimbabwe at 85 and Afghanistan at 78. See Table 6.2.
There were 324 applications in 2018 to the Irish Refugee Protection Programme. People from Syria made up 265 of these applications, with 23 from Eritrea and 22 from the Sudan. People aged 18 years or over accounted for 188 of the applications, while 136 were from children under the age of 18 years. See Table 6.3.
There were 6,252 refugee applicants in direct provision on 31st December, 2018 with 3,682 males and 2,570 females. Those aged 18 years or over made up 4,584 of the applicants while 1,668 were aged under 18 years. The top four countries were Zimbabwe (758), Nigeria (750), Pakistan (642) and Albania (617). See Table 6.4.
There were 41 unaccompanied minors resettled from Calais on 31st December, 2018. All of them were male, with 17 from Eritrea and 15 from Afghanistan. See Table 6.5.
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