Wednesday, 21 December 2016
Launch of the 2017-2018 Co-Chairmanship Building upon 10 Years of GFMD Achievements
On Monday, 19 December, just a few days after the highly successful Ninth GFMD Summit held in Dhaka on 10-12 December, Germany and Morocco officially launched the GFMD 2017-2018 Co-Chairmanship at the UN Headquarters in New York. For the first time since the first GFMD in 2007 and when migration policy topics are high on the political agenda around most of the world, two countries will co-chair the process for a period of two years, beginning 1 January 2017 until end December 2018.
Dr. Götz Schmidt-Bremme, Ambassador for the 2017-2018 GFMD Co-Chairmanship and Mr. El Habib Nadir, Secretary General, Ministry in Charge of Moroccans living abroad and migration affairs, respectively represented the incoming Co-Chairs Germany and Morocco during the event.
The Co-Chairs explained that Germany and Morocco, by means of their exemplary cooperation will highlight the positive aspects of migration and the need for safe, orderly and regular migration. The GFMD theme in 2017 will be "Towards a Global Social Contract on Migration and Development." As explained in the draft concept note, this theme signals the imperative to address and balance the interests between migrants and their countries of origin, transit and destinations within the framework of safe, regular and orderly migration.
The Co-Chairs’ work plan will take into account the inter-governmental consultations and negotiations that will begin in 2017, culminating in the Global Migration Compact in 2018. In this context, Germany and Morocco will lead the Global Forum towards enhancing its added value and identifying its interlinkages with existing processes, in order to promote more action-oriented outcomes. The roundtable topics to be discussed in June 2017 in Berlin, for instance, match up the thematic clusters of the Global Migration Compact. Morocco, for its part, will anchor the Forum towards the implementation and follow up of migration-related SDGs and the recommendations for safe, orderly and regular migration.
During the event, Mr. Tareq Md Ariful Islam, Deputy Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN in New York, presented the highlights of both the Ninth GFMD Summit and the Bangladesh GFMD Chairmanship, which are comprehensively described in the GFMD 2016 Chair’s Summary. Bangladesh, he said, will support the GFMD 2017-2018 Co-Chairs’ efforts in promoting a consensus around the global migration compact.
Mr. Gregory Maniatis, Senior Policy Adviser of the SRSG, highlighted the need for a political and operational framework that balances different interests (i.e., migrants, states, other stakeholders) outlines a roadmap and defines the role of the international community in building a global migration compact. Mdme. Lakshmi Puri, UN Women Executive Director and representative of the GMG Chair, on the other hand, pointed to the great opportunities that the next two years will bring for the benefit of the Global Forum and the attainment of the migration-related sustainable development goals.
Co-Chairs Morocco and Germany underlined the fact that the GFMD has generated a reservoir of best practices, initiatives, recommendations and out of the box thinking, which will help strengthen the role of the Global Forum in the coming months. The GFMD 2017-2018 calendar of activities for 2017 includes the first and second preparatory meetings of the GFMD supporting structures (Troika, Steering Group and Friends of the Forum) and Government-led Roundtable Teams in Geneva, to be held on 1-2 February and 5-6 April, a Thematic meeting in Morocco in May, and the 10th GFMD Summit in Berlin on 28 to 30 June 2017.
The launching event was organized on the occasion of the International Migrants Day celebration and was moderated by Mr. Gibril Faal -- a successful Gambian migrant who is now Interim Director of ADEPT and Director of GK Partners. It gathered around 100 participants from UN Member States, international organizations and the civil society.
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