GENEVA, 5 November 2013 (ICMC) - The role of civil society in this year’s High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development (HLD) was greater than it was in the first meeting in 2006, the United Nations department of Economic and Social Affairs reported in its November newsletter.

UNDESA, the Secretariat entity responsible for the development pillar of the UN, noted that “several NGO and civil society representatives were allowed to speak in the plenary, while they also participated in roundtables either as panelists or as speakers from the floor.”

This year’s HLD meeting, held in New York, marked the second time in history that the UN considered international migration and development in its General Assembly.

What is more, it was the first time that UN Member Sates agreed on key principles and recommendations on international migration and development thus unanimously adopting the Declaration of the HLD.

This joint declaration showed that since the first HLD, “trust between Member States had grown”, allowing them to agree on some key principles and recommendations on international migration and development, UNDESA said.

Among these principles, the declaration recognizes:

• the important contributions migrants make to countries of origin, transit and destination;
• the need to integrate both development and human rights dimensions into the migration debate and calls for safe, orderly and regular migration;
• migration as a key factor for sustainable development and calls for integrating migration into the post-2015 development agenda;
• the importance of practical initiatives to assist and support migrants stranded in vulnerable situations;
• the need to promote conditions for cheaper transfer of remittances, and to improve the collection of migration data.

Upon the request by civil society partners and the United Nations, the GFMD Civil Society Coordinating Office of the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) was tasked with convening the HLD Civil Society Steering Committee.

Whereas the United Nations is responsible for registrations and invitations for the Hearings and the HLD, ICMC and the Steering Committee coordinate civil society “self” organizing and preparations, bring together available resources and manage funding made available by the MacArthur Foundation and the Open Society Foundations to support part of the civil society participation in the HLD.

For more on civil society and the HLD, please visit hldcivilsociety.org.

For more on the High-level Dialogue, including preparatory activities, reports, the outcome documents and other relevant documentation, recordings of the meeting sessions, as well as an inventory of the statements, see http://www.un.org/esa/population/meetings/HLD2013/mainhld2013.html?main<

-- by Caitlin Hannahan and Lori Brumat

 Photocredit © Texty.nl / July 2013