When Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam’s policy lead in Niger, Nigeria, and Chad, went to Brussels for meetings at the European Union institutions in late October, she expected to be talking about the region’s humanitarian crisis.

Now, being here, I have come to realize all the hoopla is about migration,” Dabi told Devex in Brussels. “Maybe we need to find a way to rephrase our humanitarian engagement to highlight [migration issues], but to pull it back towards our own agenda.”

Dabi is not alone in her concerns.

Since then, “addressing the root causes of migration” has become a central refrain in European development policy, driving billions of euros worth of aid. That includes the new European Fund for Sustainable Development, a plan worth a potential 4.1 billion euros ($4.8 billion) to trigger private investment in Africa and the European neighborhood, in order to alleviate poverty and other “migratory pressures.” The EU’s new Consensus on Development — a framework that will guide the development policy of the world’s fourth-largest bilateral donor until 2030 — also promises to “address the root causes of irregular migration.”

But critics say there is little agreement over what those root causes are, and that it is unclear what definition is being used to guide policy.

Read the full article by Vince Chadwick about migration from Devex International Development