Sending remittances resists all crises: “I couldn’t eat here thinking that my mother is hungry in Senegal”

News published on Feb 23, 2023 @ 11:45 am

In the last 20 years, remittance flows have quintupled despite successive crises. According to the UN, 200 million migrant workers send money to more than 800 million family members in their countries of origin.

Despite the covid-19 crisis and political instability, remittance flows have continued to grow and in the last 20 years have multiplied by five, according to the World Bank. This organization affirms that in 2022, low- and middle-income countries received 626,000 million US dollars(585,000 million euros, approximately) in money transfers. “In the last 20 years, we have had several crises (a security one after 9/11, an economic one in 2007, a migration one in 2015, a health one in 2020, and the one now, derived from the war in Ukraine), and always The same story repeats itself: remittances are the flow that remains most balanced. That is what seems most impressive to me, most humane,” says Pedro De Vasconcelos, director of the Financing Fund for Remittances of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), in conversation with this newspaper.

Topic
Remittance families and development
Focus Region
Global