FORUM FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS AND DEVELOPMENT TO BE HELD AT HEADQUARTERS, 7 - 8 OCTOBER

Note to Correspondents

FORUM FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS AND DEVELOPMENT

TO BE HELD AT HEADQUARTERS, 7 - 8 OCTOBER

The third meeting of the International Forum for Social Development, an initiative of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, will be held on 7 and 8 October at United Nations Headquarters.

The two-day event will address the theme “International Migrants and Development”, and will bring together personalities from governments, international organizations and civil society.  Following a closed seminar, there will be an open informal debate in the context of the fifty-eighth session of the General Assembly, on 8 October, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Conference Room 2.  The open debate will be chaired by Jean-Jacques Elmiger, Chairman of the forty-second session of the Commission for Social Development.  The closed seminar will be chaired by Jan O. Karlsson, Minister for Development Cooperation, Migration and Asylum Policy, Sweden.

The aim of the Forum is to explore the need and possibility for a strengthened international cooperation on international migration and the role and situation of international migrants.

The Secretary-General indicated in 2002 in his report on “Strengthening the United Nations:  An Agenda for Further Changes” that migration was one of the issues “on which the United Nations must deepen its knowledge, sharpen its focus and act upon more effectively”.  The Forum aims to contribute to that process.

Multilateral cooperation on international migration and international migrants needs a political agreement on its intellectual foundations and on its objectives.  It calls for an identification of issues that could be usefully addressed at the global level.  It also calls for reflection on the processes, institutions and partners that ought to be involved in such identification of priority issues that could benefit from discussions in global forums.  An open dialogue is a necessary prelude to an international cooperation that is, at this point, practically non-existent.

A related objective of the Forum is to assess the possibility, in the context of a division of responsibilities within the United Nations and the United Nations system, of treating issues pertaining to international migrants and development from a social perspective, in the appropriate intergovernmental body and with the appropriate participation of the actors involved.  Adopting a social perspective means that an effort will be made to keep in the forefront of the debate the well-being of migrants in its various aspects and the social harmony of the societies concerned.  These concepts have to be defined, their components identified, and a reflection has to be engaged on which issues might usefully be debated and acted upon in the framework of a more active international cooperation.

The agenda of the Forum is the following:

Theme 1:  The Current Situation of International Migrants

-- Addressing the public perceptions of international migration and international migrants;

-- Ascertaining the social conditions of international migrants.

Theme 2:  Building an Orderly Regime for International Migrants:  the Role of International Cooperation

-- Assessing the prospects and limits of national policies, bilateral agreements, and regional processes;

-- Reflecting on the objectives, instruments and modalities of a strengthened international cooperation.

The open informal debate will focus on the second theme.  The panellists for this debate will be:

-- Nadine Alvergue de Molina, Director-General for Immigration, El Salvador

-- Gerónimo Gutiérrez, Vice-Minister for North America at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico

-- Jan O. Karlsson, Minister for Development Cooperation, Migration and Asylum Policy, Sweden

-- Susan F. Martin, Director, Institute for the Study of International Migration, United States

-- Michael D. Tlhomelang, Director, Ministry of Home Affairs, South Africa

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