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Caritas at the Civil Society days at the 2009 Global Forum on Migration and Development


Brussels/Athens, 04 November 2009 - Around 230 delegates from Civil Society (CS), including academia, NGO, Diaspora organizations, trade unions and the business sector, participated in the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) CS Days, which took place in Athens on 2 and 3 November, before the governmental Forum started.  

Noticeably, representatives from organisations focusing on migration matters largely outnumbered the development sector representatives. However, the Caritas delegation included Daniel Verger, Head of the International action at Secours Catholique/Caritas France, who presented a background paper on “mainstreaming migration in development planning – key actors, key strategies, key actions”.  

Church-related organisations (including Caritas Internationalis) active in development and migration issues and present in Athens had adopted a joint statement before the meeting. From their two days of intense and well-prepared exchanges, CS representatives endorsed a report which was presented both at an interface session with Governments during the CS Days attended by 40 government representatives and at the opening of the governmental meeting. Here are key elements of the CS report:

      Civil Society Days - Athens 2009 

Civil Society Days - Athens 2009

  • Affordable, safe and ethical migration: Transaction costs of migration (e.g. remittance fees) should be reduced and procedures (e.g. document requirements) simplified. CS and governments should monitor recruitment practices, implement complaint mechanisms for abuses and adopt codes of conduct for ethical recruitment, especially in the health care sector, in order to avoid brain drain, while protecting the freedom of movement. 
  • Migrants’ rights: Existing international human and labour rights frameworks must be effectively implemented in order to ensure protection of migrant workers. New legal frameworks should be created, notably for the protection of domestic workers. 
  • Flexibility and Portability of rights and justice, which would the movement of migrant workers (e.g. changing from short term permits to long term permits). Circular migration and temporary migration programmes need to be further explored. A key concern is to make them more family-friendly, avoiding to separate families for long time. 
  • Policy coherence: the link between migration trends and poverty reduction strategies should be strengthened in order to better identify needs for programmes and cooperation. 
  • Building alliances: The business sector who was proactively invited for the first time came across as a key actor for the protection of migrant workers. Further cooperation between CS and business should be explored.  

The next Forum will be held in Puerto Vallarta/Mexico in the week of the 8th of November 2010. Mexico is determined to work towards an open, inclusive and transparent Forum, and have already established contact with some CS representatives (including Caritas) to shape the agenda, with promises to hold the CS Days and the Governmental Forum in the same venue and have a common day between CS and governments. This gives some hope for an improved dialogue. Certainly also CS has to do its homework and decide if the CS days are a Forum to collect and shape clear and sharp advocacy messages for governments or if its main goal is to exchange practices and lessons learned, or both


For more information, please contact:
Blandine Bouniol
Policy Officer for International Cooperation
Tel: +32 (0)2 235 26 55 
bbouniol@caritas-europa.org 


 
 

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