Session III: Building balanced narratives on migration and the contribution of migrants to sustainable development
Guiding Questions:
- What are the facts and evidence from research about the multiple contributions of migrants and migration to sustainable development? (To what extent could such positive interlinkages be useful to influence the migration discourse?
- What effective strategies and practices have governments identified to a) react to polemical debates and excessive negative public attention on migrants; and b) lower the emotional level of domestic immigration debates and focus the attention on long-term issues (e.g. social cohesion, labour shortages)?
- Please share concrete examples of best practices of communication efforts, depicting migrants as agents for sustainable development. What lessons can be learnt from these examples? What ways of communication/visualization are particularly appealing?
- In what specific ways could civil society, business, media and the youth contribute to building a balanced narrative on the contribution of migrants to sustainable development? Moderator: Ms. Paola Pace of IOM Tunisia 4
Speakers:
Hon. Ms. Sarah P. Arriola, Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs, Philippines
Sarah Arriola is presently the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) of the Philippines. As the undersecretary, her duties involve: active participation in international and global conferences and coordination with government agencies, reviews utilization of assistance-to-nationals (ATN) and Legal Assistance Funds provided for distressed overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), as well as initiation of comprehensive labor migration programs with government agencies and global partners, such as the International Organization for Migration and other UN agencies.
Prior to her post at the DFA, she served as the Chief of Staff of the Office of the Majority Leader and concurrently Chief of the Investigation Service of the Senate Blue Ribbon Oversight Office Management, as well as the Committee Secretary of the Senate Committee on Rules.
She is also a Professorial Lecturer 1 of the Philippine Judicial Academy and has been a faculty member of Ateneo Law School for over a decade. She specializes in Administrative Law, Law on Public Officers, and Fundamentals of Thesis Writing where she serves as a Member of the Thesis Committee.
Usec Arriola obtained her Juris Doctor degree from the Ateneo Law School in 1998 and her LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex in 2004, where she was a University of Essex and British Chevening scholar. She took Bachelor of Arts in Communication at the Ateneo de Manila University College of Arts and Sciences in 1993.
Ms. Kristy Siegfried, UNHCR
Ms. Kristy Siegfried is a senior writer and editor of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). She compiles The Refugee Brief, UNHCR’s daily news digest. Prior to joining UNHCR, she was the Global Migration Editor for IRIN News (now The New Humanitarian). After more than a decade in Johannesburg, South Africa, she is now based near Oxford.
Ms. Eliza Marks, Project Technical Officer, ILO REFRAME
Ms. Eliza Marks is Technical Officer of the Regional Fair Migration Project in the Middle East (FAIRWAY). The project promotes policy change for fair migration; strengthens institutional mechanisms to support implementation of laws and policies; and reduces discriminatory attitudes and actions towards migrant workers. The project is operational in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, and focuses on the sectors in which low-skilled migrant workers predominate – construction and domestic work. In this role, Eliza provides technical support in the areas of advocacy, media engagement, and the development of capacity building training programmes.
Eliza holds a BA in Development Studies (Hons Class I) from the University of New South Wales, and a MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford, where she conducted research into citizenship, statelessness and mobility.
Ms. Marta Arias, Global Lead, Campaign on Migrant and Refugee Children, (#ChildrenUprooted), UNICEF
Ms. Marta Arias is the Global Lead of UNICEF’s campaign to raise awareness and increase worldwide support to migrant and refugee children, called #ChildrenUprooted. She has more than 20 years of experience on international development, human rights and social affairs in Spain, Latin America and now globally. Former Director of Campaigns for Oxfam in Spain and the Spanish National Committee for UNICEF, she joined UNICEF Headquarters in Geneva in 2015. Author of several publications and frequent spokesperson with TV, radio and written media.
Ms. Alexis Nadine Bautista, Project Coordinator, Migrant Forum in Asia
Alexis Nadine Bautista is a program officer in Migrant Forum in Asia. She helps coordinate and facilitate MFA programs in the region on the different focus areas such as documentation as evidence-based advocacy, health and migration, as well as women in migration, and is one of the focal persons of the Lawyers Beyond Borders (LBB)—MFA’s lawyers’ network of legal experts interested in advocating for the rights of migrant workers. She is one also one of the focal persons of MFA’s recruitment reform campaign through the Open Working Group on Labor Migration and Recruitment, a platform working on collective advocacy to bring about positive change in recruitment regimes.
In MFA, she is heavily engaged in the national, regional, and international processes on and related to migration, and is currently the point person for the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM). Alexis continues to raise perspective and concerns in the different spaces and platforms around the region in relation to human rights, labor migration, and development.
Discussion