Speeches and Talk
Date Publish

Conference on Migration and Development

OPENING STATEMENT

I'd like to begin by welcoming you all to this conference on
Migration and Development and thanking our co-hosts, the Government
of the Kingdom of Belgium.



The link between migration and development is not new. For IOM,
recognition of the close relationship between economic development
and migration was underlined in the organization’s founding
resolution of 1951.



What is new today is the velocity of change in global mobility.
Globalizing forces, including reduced barriers to the movement of
goods, capital and services worldwide inevitably have implications
for the movement of people.



Even more profoundly, perceptions on migration are changing. What
we see today is a shift away from a predominantly negative view of
migration and development, which emphasized eradicating the root
causes of migration, “brain drain”, labour force
depletion and rural exodus, to a growing recognition that migration
can be an important factor in growth, stability and prosperity.



You will hear much in the coming two days about migrants as agents
of development who can benefit both home and host countries through
their economic, social, political and cultural contributions. You
will hear about the enormous development potential of migration for
countries of origin, including for the least developed among them.
You will hear about the role of remittances in reducing poverty and
economic vulnerability, and in improving sustainable human
development.



These are welcome messages, especially given the broadened range of
voices echoing them. The private sector, the World Bank, other
international financial institutions, migrants associations,
governments and academics are today engaged as never before.



Our challenge over these two days is to identify what we as
partners can do to realize the potential of migration phenomena for
development. What new thinking, what joint activities, what means
to strengthen policy dialogue and programming can we pursue
together that will bring us closer to achieving our objective?



Integrated Policy Making



As the International Dialogue on Migration at the IOM Council last
autumn emphasized, there is a profound need to ensure that
migration is integrated into development planning agendas at
national and international levels. Much like environmental or human
rights, no development strategy should go forward today without
considering how migration trends will affect and be affected by it.
Migration is that fundamental to development, trade, foreign
policy.



Multilateral dialogues including IOM’s International Dialogue
on Migration, regional consultations and, of course, events such as
this are instrumental in bringing all the relevant actors together
and improving understanding of the complex relationship between
migration and development.



Most policies and strategic development frameworks, such as
national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and the global
Millennium Development Goals, do not systematically integrate
migration considerations. IOM has been approached by a number of
governments for assistance in mainstreaming migration into their
PRSPs and is taking concrete steps to address this need.



At the multilateral level, a key feature of IOM's International
Dialogue on Migration is building bridges to related policy domains
and actors - migration and trade with the WTO and World Bank;
migration and health with the WHO; and migration and development
with national development agencies and inter-governmental partners.
We have a responsibility to bring our complementary expertise to
bear to address these issues, and we have identified an effective
means to do so.



How can we now turn this useful cooperation at the level of
dialogue into cooperation at the level of action?



Let me offer an example by way of illustration. In the case of
Mauritius, the World Bank is embarking on a trade assessment with a
view toward liberalization. As some unemployment is expected to
result, IOM is developing labour migration programmes for displaced
workers, for example through a possible care-giver programme for
Canada. This is an example of how agencies and governments can plan
to ease potential dislocations by working more effectively
together.



At the regional level we see positive developments too. For
example, the Ministerial Consultations on Overseas Employment in
Asia, organized by IOM since 2003, expanded last fall to include
participation of countries of destination such as the GCC States,
Malaysia, the Republic of Korea and Italy. A solid platform was
established for further cooperation between Asian countries of
origin and destination around the critical issue of overseas
employment.



The Ministerial Conference of the Least Developed Countries on
Migrants’ Remittances, recently concluded in Cotonou, Benin,
was another step in the right direction - a step towards deeper
engagement of the financial sector in harnessing migration for
development.



IOM's newly formed Business Advisory Board, comprised of the CEO's
of 14 major corporations worldwide, was formed to bring the
business voice into the migration policy debate. To ensure the
active engagement of these stakeholders in migration policy
dialogue and programming, the theme selected for this year’s
International Dialogue on Migration is “Partnerships in
Migration: Engaging Business and Civil Society”.



An IOM programme called “Sustainable Development for
Nariño’s Coffee Growing Families” aims at
reducing poverty among coffee growers and their families in the
southwestern Colombian province of Nariño and thereby
diminishing migration pressure. This programme is a partnership
among Starbucks, Empresas de Nariño, the Dutch government;
and the provincial government of Nariño.



Better Data



Better data is a prerequisite for better policy. We need the facts
on remittances, migrant networks, labour markets, the impact of
various policies on migration and poverty reduction and much more.
Sound data is the key to understanding the complex relationship
between migration and development and, thus, to effective policy
and programme development.



We also need to develop better indicators to measure the impact of
migration on development, if we are to chart the progress that
states are making towards the achievement of the MDGs and poverty
reduction.



To be able to say that a particular migration policy is
“development-friendly” implies some knowledge of
impacts and some criteria for assessing policy outcomes. To date,
there has been little systematic evaluation of the effects of
migration policies on development. We welcome the World Bank's
initiative to devote its considerable research expertise to this
task, and have offered to work side by side through our various
programmes and activities.



The World Bank's expertise in macro-economics is an ideal
complement to IOM's migration expertise. Migrants’ legal
status, temporary or permanent, and host country family
reunification policies can have an impact on the types of payment
systems migrants use, the amount of remittances and their use back
home. But we simply don't know enough to talk with certainty about
the nature and extent of the relationship between these factors.
Hence the need for more joint policy studies and - why not? - an
annual report on migration and development policies.



Individuals and small businesses today need mechanisms to be able
to contribute to development of home communities. Promising models
exist that encourage partnership for development at this level.
IOM’s recent survey “Engaging Diasporas as Agents for
Development” reveals that governments are actively devising
innovative programmes to reach out to migrants. However, much
remains to be done to understand how or if policies and programmes
from one setting can be effectively applied in different
environments.



Since 2001, IOM has been successfully implementing Migration for
Development in Africa (MIDA) programmes - a series of capacity
building projects whose objective is the mobilization and transfer
of knowledge, expertise, finance and other resources of the African
diaspora to meet the development needs of African countries.



Recognition of the role and power of migrants and migrants’
associations in our societies and the global economy is all the
more crucial as individuals and communities are becoming
increasingly trans-national, with movement between and allegiance
to multiple countries one of the key outcomes of globalisation.



A More Open Labour Market



While this conference rightly focuses on the development potential
of migration for countries of origin, the need for more immigration
to support demographic and labour needs and to maintain economic
growth and development in Europe is widely acknowledged.



We all know migration can help mitigate labour shortages, enrich
the human capital of host countries, and improve the flexibility
and productivity of their economies. What, can we do to facilitate
the gradual, selective and managed opening of labour markets in
destination countries?



Europe is entering an era of labour shortage. The population growth
in many European countries is already due entirely to immigration,
while Europe’s workforce is expected to decline by another 20
million by 2030. These forecasts contrast with projections of
growing populations in much of the developing world. As legal
opportunities for labour migration are still limited, there is a
growing supply-demand gap on the labour market, creating a
favourable environment for traffickers and smugglers.



Businesses want to recruit and move their personnel globally, yet
they often face complicated, time-consuming and administrative
structures. We need to focus our collective efforts on creating
means to better match labour supply with labour demand today and in
future. We need to ensure that smuggling rings do not do the
matching for us. This is one of the paramount challenges of our
day.



More open labour markets in destination countries combined with
measures to encourage permanent or temporary return home create a
kind of “brain circulation” that can benefit both host
and home countries as well as migrants themselves. Approaches of
this sort also reduce irregular migration pressures.



Let me give you some concrete examples to help guide our way.
Targeted, cooperative approaches for selection and training of
personal care and seasonal workers from Sri Lanka and Moldova to
Italy, facilitated by IOM, provide useful models. So do IOM
programmes for recruitment of Guatemalan seasonal agricultural
workers to Canada and Colombian workers to Spain. The Czech
Government's information campaign to actively select qualified
workers from Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kazakhstan and Moldova is
now expanding to other suppliers. Korea's new temporary labour
migration scheme is supported by an IOM assessment of the labour
migration management capacities of twelve Asian countries. Ask
these governments about these experiences. They are leading the
way.



A more comprehensive approach in human resource development is
needed to meet the needs of both countries of origin and receiving
countries. At the same time, Governments will need to adopt more
flexible approaches to migration policy that put emphasis on the
managed mobility of migrants.



Priority Areas for Action



First, wider and deeper inter-state cooperation, especially between
countries of origin and destination, is a key to a better
functioning international labour market.



In that regard, we need not fear that more remittances from a more
open international labour market will result in reduced official
development assistance. I believe the likely result to be quite the
contrary. Effective partnerships, bilateral or multilateral, can
enhance prospects for more efficient and better targeted aid.



On the other hand, efforts to develop new international legal
regimes or formal institutional structures to promote migration for
development are less likely to yield positive results than are
voluntary, cooperative efforts building on existing mechanisms and
institutions, based on shared recognition of the benefits to be
realized by voluntary participation.



Second, we need to promote policy dialogue and closer cooperation
between migration experts and development experts, who are still
looking for a common language. This means that migration has to be
better integrated into development policy planning and national
plans to reduce poverty. It also means that migration policies have
to be more “development-friendly” and include a
stronger development perspective.



Finally, we need to experiment. In order to develop new approaches,
we need first to take stock of what works and what doesn’t
work - this will require better data and analysis. But studies are
not enough. We need to invest in new pilot projects and programmes
to test out in very practical ways how migration can best
contribute to development.



I believe that the time has now come to marshal the good will of
the international community. The occasion of the High Level
Dialogue on International Migration and Development to be held in
the General Assembly in September can serve as a moment for taking
stock of where we stand on realizing the positive potential of
migration and as a catalyst for future action. IOM stands by your
side to work together to usher in a new era of migration for
development.

STATEMENT AT CLOSING SESSION

Your Majesty,



It is my honour, my pleasure, to address to you - the
representative of Belgium - a few words of thanks on behalf of all
of the participants of this conference. And in the presence of
three of your Ministers and of the European Commissioner, it is for
me a pleasure to acknowledge the leading role which Belgium plays
today in the world debate on migration and which indeed your
country, your government has played for a very long time. And I
think the conference that we are now concluding is an example, one
among many, of that leadership role.



This conference was very successful. It was a good idea, at the
right time and the selection of the participants was really first
rate. You have before you, Your Majesty, a cross-section of the
world’s best brains and biggest hearts on this very important
humanitarian issue. There are government representatives here,
there are civil society representatives, journalists, in rather
large number, and that is good, as we need to have the word out.
There are representatives of many international organisations like
my own. They are dedicated people who have as their dream and their
goal helping the world come together better through human
mobility.



I think it is fair to say that everyone in this room would agree
with me that we are standing on the doorstep, in the 21st century,
of another very great period of human mobility and migration. Such
as the world has seen in the past, but which is now fairly recent.
The 20th century was the period of crisis and conflict and
blockage, a period that saw many wonderful developments but also
very great tragedies. It was a period in which refugees, displaced
persons occupied too much of our attention.



But I think that as we look into the new century, we can see that -
with some luck, good policy, and good leadership - we will be
entering another era, one of general peace and of spreading
prosperity. And I think the migration development is going to be
very, very important, because I think the migration development
will be a factor which makes sure that no part of the world is left
out of the general increase in peace and prosperity. And that means
that those countries in the world that have so far been left behind
in the development process, in the economic process, will have an
opportunity through the movement of their people, through the
participation in a globalised economy by the talent, the skills and
hard work of their own people to make up for the lack of resources,
to make up for the late start, make up for some of the historical
disadvantages that they suffer from. They can help themselves catch
up with the rest of the world and participate in this era of
growing peace and prosperity. I do believe that it is governments,
like the Belgian government, that take an enlightened view of the
need to help developing countries to accomplish this. It is through
the policies of your government, of your ministers, that we will
see the way forward. And I’m reminded that my own
organisation was founded here in Brussels, about 55 years ago. The
signature of the document that set up IOM as the Provisional
Inter-Government Committee for Migration in Europe - that was what
we were then, right after the end of the Second World War - that
started here in Belgium. So Belgium has been very close to
important for IOM ever since then, and that continues. Some of the
speakers have talked about a programme, that we are very proud to
put on - in Africa, MIDA - Migration for Development in Africa. And
you will see on our way to the reception afterwards, some photos of
people that we have helped through the MIDA programme. MIDA was a
Belgian idea. MIDA started 5-6 years ago. It was Belgium that took
a chance on this. It was Belgium that had the idea, the concept
that through the circulation of trained and talented people from
the third world who benefited from university education and life in
Belgium, you could make specific helpful interventions, small but
very important in countries that needed the help and got so much of
this help. So it’s another example and I sincerely think that
this conference is going to do what Commissioner Frattini hoped it
would, be a very important contribution for the global debate. It
has been a kind of global debate, we focused on Europe and Africa,
appropriately so. We had very good interventions from Asia, from
Latin America and North America. So this was a kind of mini global
debate and I think a very successful one. I think people will look
back on this meeting as one of first and most important step in a
new era on migration and development. All of us can take some pride
in having been here and participate in this. And I think you, Your
Majesty, should feel a particular sense of pride that it was
Belgium that made this possible.

Thank you very much.