A/HRC/41/38 of their remittances if their husbands who receive those remittances do not use them for the preferred purposes.57 54. Women are more likely to invest remittances in children’s education and health. In a study conducted in 2008, it was found that remittances had increased school enrolment in Ecuador on average by 2.6 per cent, with the impact being even higher among girls, in rural areas and among the poor. 58 Similarly, studies conducted in Guatemala, Mexico and Morocco showed that children had better health and lower mortality rates after their mothers returned because of the new and improved knowledge of health care and increased financial means available to the family. 59 55. It is important to note that the migration of women also leaves gaps in their countries of origin. In 2011, the World Bank pointed out that physicians and nurses were the professionals that migrated most often.60 It is therefore not surprising that according to one study, sub-Saharan countries are experiencing a shortage of 600,000 nurses. It was found in another study that from 1999 to 2001, 60 per cent of registered nurses left tertiary hospitals in Malawi, likely to migrate. As a result, 64 per cent of nursing positions (heavily dominated by women) remain unfilled, with medical centres operating with no nurses or with employees who have as little as 10 weeks of medical training. While the Government of Malawi has tried to increase resources and wages for health professionals to offset the brain drain, it has not been able to compete with the salaries offered in other countries. 61 4. Migration and civic participation 56. Migrant women appear to be less able to claim their own rights in their countries of destination compared to migrant men. This is generally due to women having less decisionmaking power within their homes, and engaging less in political decision-making and policy processes. 62 Moreover, women’s effective participation in migrant associations is frequently limited by gender-based discrimination and marginalization, as traditionally those associations have replicated discriminatory gender relations. 57. However, the limitations on the participation of women and their inability to further their specific priorities on the collective agenda has, in some cases, prompted women to create their own associations, which has had a positive impact as it has made the work and interventions of those diaspora associations more gender-sensitive and gender-responsive.63 58. A good example of civic participation coupled with economic empowerment and socioeconomic development is the online forum named African Diaspora Professional Women in Europe. It was founded by a Togolese entrepreneur and resident of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in the hope of creating a network of highly skilled Africans in the European Union, in order to empower their position in Europe and to create development projects for African girls. Other similar projects are the African Women’s Development Fund, the Pan-African Women’s Philanthropy Network and the Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation Europe.64 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 14 Anjali Fleury, Understanding Women and Migration: A Literature Review. Working Paper 8 (Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development, 2016), p. 15. See Carla Calero, Arjun S. Bedi and Robert Sparrow, “Remittances, liquidity constraints and human capital investments in Ecuador”. Working Paper, No. 3358 (Bonn, Institute for the Study of Labor, 2008). UNFPA, State of World Population 2006. A Passage to Hope: Women and International Migration (New York, 2006), pp. 29–30. Camilla Spadavecchia, “Migration of women from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe”, p. 108. See Richard Record and Abdu Mohiddin, “An economic perspective on Malawi’s medical ‘brain drain’” in Globalization and Health, vol. 2, No. 12 (2006). O’Neil, Fleury and Foresti, “Women on the move”, p. 6. IOM, “Integration of a gender perspective in the migration and development debate”, p. 6. Camilla Spadavecchia, “Migration of women from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe”, p. 112.