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14 June 2021

Dear John xxxxxx,

As U.S. President Joe Biden meets Tuesday with European leaders at the EU-U.S. Summit, migration may be one of the topics on the agenda. Transatlantic dialogue offers an opportunity for the United States to learn from the European experience in linking up migration and development aid, and to reflect on how the emerging U.S. strategy to address the root causes of migration and displacement from Central America can improve upon Europe's efforts in Africa.

The Biden administration's pledge to provide $4 billion in development assistance to Central America over the next four years shares some of the same goals as the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, which has spent nearly 5 billion euros since its launch in 2015. But seeking to address the root causes of migration via development aid is a complicated proposition and requires other interventions, as a new Migration Policy Institute-MPI Europe commentary discusses.

In it, analysts Camille Le Coz and Ariel G. Ruiz Soto draw five lessons from the EUTF experience that are directly applicable to the emerging U.S. strategy for Central America.

Lesson No. 1? "As tempting as it is to announce a brand-new initiative that will address the challenges associated with irregular migration, a growing volume of research suggests that development assistance on its own is a blunt tool for reshaping flows," they write.

Beyond job creation, the EUTF experience suggests the United States will have to target its investments in ways that can effectively tackle entrenched governance challenges, reach local-level actors, and engage migrants as part of the solution. And because there is no single recipe that works, monitoring and evaluation must be built into program design to ensure that interventions can be adapted in real time to assure their success.

You can find the commentary here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/rethink-links-between-development-aid-migration.

With thanks for your interest in our work,

Michelle Mittelstadt 
Director of Communications and Public Affairs,
Migration Policy Institute

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