UN-SPONSORED EXPERT MEETING NEXT WEEK TO DISCUSS INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND POLICIES
Press Release
POP/672
UN-SPONSORED EXPERT MEETING NEXT WEEK TO DISCUSS INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND POLICIES
19980626 THE HAGUE, 26 June (UNFPA) -- A meeting here of international experts next week will examine the economic, social, cultural, and human rights dimensions of migration, and discuss the best policies for governments to deal with international migratory flows.The meeting is being held at a time when governments, from both sending and receiving countries, are increasingly recognizing migration as a key international issue. Today, more than 125 million people reside outside their country of birth. Experts see links between the flow of people between countries and international economic, political and cultural relations.
More than 100 experts and specialists from throughout the world will attend the meeting, the Technical Symposium on International Migration and Development, which will be held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 29 June to 3 July. The Symposium is organized by the United Nations Inter-Agency Working Group on International Migration and will be hosted by the Government of the Netherlands.
International migration can have a positive impact on both countries of origin and receiving countries, providing the former with remittances and the latter with needed human resources. It can also facilitate the transfer of skills, technology and capital. However, international migration may also entail the loss of scarce human resources in countries of origin, and may contribute to political and racial tensions in receiving countries, according to the Symposium's organizers.
The goal of the Symposium is to improve understanding of these and related issues from the point of view of both sending and receiving countries. Participants will discuss migration policy issues facing governments. They will assess the success or failure of existing measures to manage migratory flows and suggest strategies to improve orderly migration and to counteract the marginalization of migrants.
Among the topics participants will address are:
-- The relationship between international migration and development;
-- The factors generating international migration;
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-- The capabilities of emigration countries to protect men and women destined for low-skilled employment;
-- The development potential of return migration; and
-- Responses to the arrival of asylum seekers.
Recent United Nations conferences have made recommendation about international migration, especially the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which met in Cairo in September 1994. The Symposium, one of the events of a five-year post-Cairo review process (ICPD+5), will evaluate the impact of the ICPD recommendations.
R.C. Harkema, Director of the Social and Institutional Development Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, will deliver the keynote address to the Symposium at the opening session. Senior officials from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the agencies which organized the Symposium, will also speak at the opening session.
The Symposium, to be chaired by Dutch demographer Dirk J. van de Kaa, Professor of Demography at the University of Amsterdam, will conclude on with a panel discussion of key findings and most salient issues identified during the meeting.
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