Manila, Philippines
27-30 October 2008
The Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) is a new initiative of the international community to address the migration and development interconnections in practical and action-oriented ways. It marks the culmination of more than a decade of international discussion on the growing importance of these linkages, and the progressive acknowledgment of the need to address the policy implications and responses in a multilateral framework.
The Manila GFMD revolves around the central theme, “Protecting and Empowering Migrants for Development.” It will build on the themes of the Brussels GFMD roundtables, but with a special focus on protecting and empowering migrants for development. It will foreground two further priorities identified in the initial Brussels survey, namely human rights and the promotion of regular migration. While human rights had been treated as a cross-cutting issue in Brussels, along with gender and root causes, it will be mainstreamed as a roundtable theme in Manila. This is in line with a key finding of the High Level Dialogue that the benefits of international migration, not only for migrants themselves but also for origin and host societies, are contingent on the protection of migrants’ rights.
For the Manila GFMD, some 7 sessional teams are being set up among developing and developed countries to foster frank and concrete exchange and cooperation in the preparatory process, and to ensure government ownership of the process. This will be important for achieving the outcomes of the Forum. The supporting Roundtable themes are: a) Migration, Development and Human Rights; b) Secure, legal migration can achieve stronger development impacts; and c) Policy and institutional coherence and partnerships.
Conclusions of the 2007 Global Forum in Belgium are available for download: here
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