FIRST MEETING OF THE GLOBAL FORUM ON MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT
9-11 July 2007, Brussels, Belgium

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The significance of the GFMD is attested to by the overwhelming government support for such a global consultative process at the HLD.  UN Member States recognized the growing connections between migration and development, in particular the huge developmental benefits to be derived from more coherent, linked up and partnership-based migration approaches. Yet there was still a crippling lack of information and data and appropriate institutional structures and resources in many countries to achieve these; and importantly, there was no single, all encompassing global forum to bring together policy makers on these two critical issues. Some good practices were being tried in a piecemeal way by governments and international agencies around the world, and these needed to be more widely understood and adapted where appropriate; and more cooperative frameworks explored.

The GFMD thus builds on the achievements of the HLD as well as on the work and report of the Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM), and on the report of the UN Secretary General on International Migration and Development of 16 May 2006 issued at the request of the General Assembly. It was not intended to be part of the UN structure, but linked to it via the good offices of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on International Migration and Development. The Forum meetings take place in close consultation with the Special Representative.

The GFMD was conceived as an informal, non-binding, voluntary and government-led process, open to all UN member states. True to the principle of global inclusiveness, the Brussels meeting comprised a civil society day and two days of governmental dialogue in plenary and roundtable sessions.  The meeting attracted more than 800 government participants from 156 countries, as well as 200 representatives of civil society.

OUTCOMES OF THE BELGIUM GFMD
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The first GFMD meeting in Brussels set in place the framing structure and mechanisms to achieve the goals outlined above, endorsed in Brussels under the ‘GFMD Operating Modalities’.  These include: A Troika formed by the current, preceding and next Chair-in-office; a small Steering Group of governments to guide the process on an on-going basis; an open-ended Friends of the Forum consultative body to plan and discuss the agenda with all interested governments; an international Taskforce to assist the Chair-in-Office in coordinating all preparations, documents, roundtable teams and background papers etc.; a global network of GFMD focal points (both governments and relevant organisations); and a team-based approach among governments to prepare the Forum panel discussions.       

The roundtable approach facilitated government team-work in exploring good practices and their wider global applicability.  The roundtable sessions were structured around the central theme of “Migration and socio-economic development”, as drawn from the priorities identified in a UN Member State-wide survey conducted by the Belgian Chair-in_office.  The three roundtable themes were: a) Human Capital Development and Labor Mobility; b) Remittances and other Diaspora Resources, and c) Enhancing Policy and Institutional Coherence and Promoting Partnerships.

The Brussels meeting resulted in a large number of policy- and practice-oriented outcomes, among them some specific proposals for follow-up workshops on labor migration recruitment practices, circular migration, data and research; a follow-up survey of institutional structures for greater policy coherence; a compendium of good practices in bilateral temporary labor migration; evaluations of codes of ethical recruitment of health workers; and closer engagement of regional consultation processes on migration and development issues and with the GFMD. These action recommendations are being followed up by governments taking the lead on the respective Brussels roundtables. Their outcomes will help move the debate further at the Manila meeting.  

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