Sixth Meeting on International Migration and Development.
On November 26 and 27, the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations held the Sixth Coordination Meeting on International Migration and Development. The Center for Migration Studies of New York was present at this meeting.
The Global Forum on Migration and Development is a voluntary, intergovernmental, non-binding and informal consultative process open to all State Members and observers of the United Nations. UN agencies and other international and regional bodies may be invited as observers. Its purpose is to address, in a transparent manner, the multidimensional aspects, opportunities and challenges related to international migration and its linkages with development, to bring together government expertise from all regions, to enhance dialogue, cooperation and partnership and to foster practical and action-oriented outcomes at the national, regional and global levels.
The first meeting was organized by the Government of Belgium and took place in Brussels from the 9th to the 11th of July 2007. The aim of the meeting was to deepen understanding, through enhanced dialogue and partnerships, of the opportunities and challenges of migration for development and vice versa.
The first meeting of the Global Forum was hailed by many participants as a landmark in the migration and development debate. Participants, however, also stressed that, while development may have moved centre stage in the migration debate, development aid should not be used for the regulation of migration flows; nor should migration be seen as an alternative to national development strategies, or the money flows generated by migrants as a substitute for official development assistance.
The objectives of the November meeting were: (a) to discuss outcomes and follow-up of the first meeting of the Global Forum on Migration and Development; (b) to consider preparations for the second meeting of the Global Forum, which will be organized and hosted by the Government of the Philippines in October 2008; (c) to exchange information on current and planned activities in the area of international migration and; (d) to exchange best practices and future plans on the use of surveys in collecting data relevant for the study of international migration.
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