Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Colleagues and friends,

The COVID-19 pandemic is deeply impacting all of our lives, including the lives of migrants and their families.

With that in mind and given the many questions and uncertainties that this pandemic will raise, the UN Network on Migration is creating this platform to provide a space for the latest information about COVID-19, specifically as it relates to migrants and people on the move.

We also hope that this serves as a forum in which to highlight the many stories and voices from the ground of migrants and our stakeholders. Migrants and their families are often part of marginalized and vulnerable groups in societies already experiencing economic hardship and marginalisation.  These hardships risk being exacerbated as a result of containment measures and xenophobic scapegoating. Migrants are also part of the solution, as members of communities and as frontline workers in providing food, transportation, care, and other services.

By collating these stories, we hope to provide a space in which we can highlight the very real, human impacts of this pandemic.  We hope, too, to provide a space in which, together, we can use these stories both to advocate for a response to COVID-19 that truly does not discriminate, and provide principled guidance as to how this should be done.

The Network will continue supporting Member States with the implementation, follow-up, and review of the Global Compact on Migration (GCM). We will continue with our work and remain at hand to support the GCM regional reviews this year.

However, we cannot pretend that the immediate future will be business as usual. Our world has changed and so must we. The realities of COVID-19 and its wide-ranging, as yet largely unforeseen, impacts, will change many things that we have in the past taken for granted. It is important that we adapt and do so ensuring we leave no one behind – migrants, their families, and communities – included.

Social distancing is just one phenomenon that has impacted us all and the type of work we do, as well as how we do it. That is why we have created this common space to try to connect as best we can during these challenging times.

Let us stay connected, even if virtually, and let’s continue to work better together. Let us take the opportunity of this crisis to envision a better world together. Indeed it is perhaps important that we do so now more than ever. Stay safe and be in touch.

UN Network on Migration

العربية 中文 Français русский Español

العربية 中文 Français русский Español

• UN: Main Page on COVID-19

• UNDESA: COVID-19 Data Hub

• IOM: COVID-19 Page

• IOM: COVID-19 Analytical Snapshots

• Migration Data Portal: COVID-19 Page

• IOM: Mobility Impacts of COVID-19 Page

• UN Habitat: Key Messages on COVID-19 & Informal Settlements

• WHO: COVID-19 Pandemic Page
• WHO: Refugees and migrants in times of COVID-19: mapping trends of public health and migration policies and practices 

• FAO: Migrant Workers & the COVID-19 Pandemic 

• Mayors Migration Council: Live Resource Guide: Municipal Migrant & Refugee Sensitive COVID-19 Responses

• UNICEF: Key Messages: Refoulement, Detention, Push-Backs, & Deportations of Asylum-Seeking & Migrant Children in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

• UNICEF: Quick Tips on COVID-19 & Migrant, Refugee & Internally Displaced Children (Children on the Move)

  العربية Français Español

• UNICEF: COVID-19 & Migrant & Displaced Children – What Local Governments Can Do

• UNICEF: Resources for Frontline Workers on Children on the Move & COVID-19

• UNICEF: Migrant & Displaced Children in the Age of COVID-19: How the Pandemic is Impacting Them & What We Can Do To Help (Article in the Migration Policy Practice journal)

• UNICEF: How a Child Refugee from Yarmouk Plays a Vital Role during COVID-19

• International Detention Coalition

• Metropolis Covid 19 Service Point

• COVID-19 Global Immigration Detention Platform

The first session of the #BeyondTheOubreak Live Learning Experience, organized by UCLG, UN-Habitat, and Metropolis, on March 25, 2020, brought together representatives from cities and partners around the world to exchange experiences on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.