IDAC 2nd Annual Conference

In December 2024, IDAC hosted its second annual conference in Rabat, Morocco. The three-day event, titled ‘On the Move and Out of Sight: Strengthening the data landscape to help protect the rights of migrant and displaced children’, convened 90 participants representing governments, international organizations, academia, civil society, youth and others working at the nexus of migration, displacement and child-specific data.

IDAC leveraged the opportunity to conduct an in-depth assessment of migration and displacement data for children at national, regional and global levels, while also calling on participants to examine how these data gaps can be overcome. Key take-aways that emerged from the conference included:

Coordination and cooperation between national statistical offices, humanitarian agencies, civil society and academia are vital to strengthening the data landscape, with a particular focus on capacity-building.
Numerous resources, agreements and frameworks provide standardized definitions, methodologies and good practices that can be used to improve the evidence base by 1) producing child-sensitive migration and displacement data and 2) making better use of existing data and research.
Emerging and innovative technologies have great potential to help close the data gaps, but they come with limitations. Efforts must explore how frontier technologies can work hand-in-hand with traditional data collection methods to improve the evidence on children on the move.
Incorporating and leveraging the perspectives and knowledge of those directly affected by migration and displacement, including youth, offer an important pathway towards inclusive data collection, analysis and use that reach marginalized populations.

IDAC’s conference demonstrated the global community’s growing recognition of its collective responsibility to improve data and statistics on behalf of the millions of migrant and displaced children worldwide.

The event was co-funded by the European Union.