DEMOCRATIZATION recommendations were published and discussed during a roundtable meeting with key national authorities on 24 October in Yerevan, leading to consideration by the Armenian authorities of adapting national legislation accordingly. ODIHR supported OSCE participating States in raising awareness and promoting the exchange of good practices on migrant integration in the OSCE region. The Office conducted training courses for members of government authorities and civil society on best practices in migrant integration in line with OSCE commitments, at the request of participating States and OSCE field operations. More than 135 participants attended training events in Shymkent, Astana, Riga, Belgrade and Yerevan. Gender-Mainstreaming Migration Policies In a majority of OSCE participating States, more than half of the total migrant population is made up of female migrants of working age.2 Current migration trends in the OSCE region and projections for the future show a need for human-rights based and gender-sensitive migration policies that take into account the specific needs of both male and female migrants. In 2013, ODIHR, in co-operation with the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities, organized regional training events on gender-sensitive labour migration policies in Warsaw and Almaty, gathering 44 participants from national authorities, civil society actors and OSCE field operations from 11 OSCE participating States (Albania, Armenia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan). Population Registration In many OSCE participating States, citizens, resident non-citizens and foreign visitors are required to register their place of permanent or temporary residence with a relevant authority, affecting their right to freedom of movement and choice of residence. Where registration procedures and criteria are complex and onerous, they can become a deterrent and an obstacle to taking up legal residence within a state. Using its Guidelines on Population Registration as a primary tool, ODIHR assists political decision-makers, practitioners and relevant authorities in reforming population-registration systems to protect the right to freedom of movement. As the freedom to travel across borders for OSCE participating State citizens is linked to obtaining secure travel documents, ODIHR and the OSCE’s Transnational Threats Department organized an expert roundtable meeting on the link between travel-document security and population-registration/civil-registration documents and processes, on 26 and 27 November in Warsaw. The event explored the incidence of genuine documents obtained using fake identities, resulting in recommendations on measures to enhance international efforts to link travel-document issuing systems to civil-registry systems as part of robust national identity management and travel document issuance. Voter and Population Registration In many OSCE participating States that practice population registration, the voter register is compiled from the population register or is based on personal information stored in various registers maintained by the state authorities. In such cases, the quality of population registers directly affects the exercise of universal and equal suffrage. In follow-up to ODIHR election observation mission recommendations, ODIHR provides policy advice and expertise to OSCE participating States to ensure synergies and effective linkages between voter registers and population-registration systems. Following a request by the State Election Commission of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, ODIHR conducted an assessment of the sharing of personal information from public registers in the process of updating the voter register. The assessment findings and recommendations were discussed at a roundtable meeting on 17 December in Skopje. Based on the recommendations, the Commission will develop measures to ensure better co-ordination with other state authorities in collecting and updating voter-list data. 2  ODIHR estimate based on data from the following publication: International Migration 2013, Wallchart, United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2013). ODIHR Annual Report 2013  /   37