Since the start of the Colombia Chairship and the official launch of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) programme in September, the GFMD Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) has been gearing up its preparatory process for civil society.
One of the key features of the 2024-2025 civil society preparatory process is a renewed emphasis on the GFMD as a process, moving beyond the Summit itself. While the summit is the culminating point, ensuring that multistakeholder dialogue, collectivisation, and advocacy are sustained all year long will lead to more robust civil society contributions to the GFMD.
In this spirit, on October 16th 2024, the GFMD CSM organised two information sessions open to civil society around the world. First, to offer an overview of what the GFMD is, giving everyone an equal footing in engaging in the process, and then to present the ‘Sociedad Civil en Rumbo a Colombia’ (Civil Society on the Road to Colombia) and how organisations and networks can contribute and engage. It detailed that civil society can engage in three ways:
- By engaging in civil society thematic dialogues, hosted by both the CSM as well as member organisations / networks, which collect the expertise of civil society, including trade unions and grassroots organisations, for collective input and commonalities into each of the thematic priorities.
- By hosting self-organised activities: The CSM invites civil society to establish dialogues that speak to the realities of migrants and grassroots organisations on the ground. The outcomes of these dialogues can be brought into the civil society collective advocacy. These may include: (1) National level dialogues, (2) Workshops on the GFMD, and (3) multi-stakeholder dialogues.
- By engaging in the civil society small thematic strategy groups: The strategy-focused thematic working groups are small working groups made up of civil society experts on all six thematic priorities, who would like to take a more active role and commitment towards shaping collective civil society strategic advocacy. Members of the strategy groups have two key responsibilities: (1) guide strategy engagement by identifying opportunities to share GFMD inputs either directly with governments and/or into other relevant migration spaces and (2) help brief and prepare CS representatives for each GFMD Roundtable, to ensure they are taking forward the advocacy messages contributed by all CS.
The Civil Society Thematic Dialogues: a time for reflection on the challenges and opportunities related to the GFMD thematic priorities
In preparation for the GFMD 1st Roundtable Consultations on November 6-7, the GFMD CSM organised a series of online thematic dialogues open to civil society from all regions of the world. These dialogues gathered input on the six thematic priorities of the Colombia Chairship and served as a basis for developing key messages that informed the contributions of the civil society delegates who attended the GFMD 1st Roundtable Consultations in Geneva.
The Colombia Chair designed the 2024-2025 GFMD process as a building block, where each preparatory meeting builds upon the topics discussed in the first one:
- The first roundtable consultations will focus on challenges and opportunities related to each of the six thematic priorities.
- The second roundtable consultations will focus on the exchange of policies and practices.
- The third roundtable consultations will focus on solutions and partnerships.
To ensure that collective inputs were relevant and focused on the 1st Preparatory Meeting conversations, the civil society’s first thematic dialogues also focused on exploring challenges and opportunities related to the six thematic priorities. The dynamic dialogue format, utilising Zoom whiteboards for collective brainstorming, allowed for discussions that found common challenges for the regions whilst still incorporating specificities where they emerged.
The GFMD 1st Preparatory Meeting in Geneva: multi-stakeholder roundtables and networking
On November 6 and 7, Colombia convened the first Preparatory Meeting, including the Steering Group (SG), the Friends of the Forum (FoF), and Roundtable Consultations of the 2024-2025 GFMD. The GFMD’s SG and FoF met on November 6 to discuss technical and thematic aspects of the Chairship.
As has become the norm at both meetings, the three GFMD mechanisms – Business, Civil Society, Mayors, and Youth stakeholder groups (through the Migration, Youth and Children Platform – MYCP) actively participated as officially mandated observers. During the meeting, Elana Wong, the Coordinator of the GFMD CSM, delivered a statement highlighting the civil society’s robust preparations as well as our concerns around limitations to language justice hindering the full participation of grassroots organisations.
The SG and FoF were followed by the first Roundtable Consultations, which brought together over 160 delegates from 52 governments and representatives from GFMD Mechanisms, Youth, and international organisations. For full details on the format of the Roundtable, read the Terms of Reference.
The discussions for each Roundtable were led by the following co-chairs:
The new format of the roundtable discussions hinges on multi-stakeholder informal dialogues, following the Chatham House rules. The room is divided into groups reflecting on guiding questions for identifying challenges and opportunities. The Civil Society Mechanism, thanks to the financial support of the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) which houses the Secretariat of the CSM, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), and some participants who were able to self-fund, was able to bring the following civil society delegates to contribute to the Roundtable discussions:
- Bernie Goulding, PIANGO
- Carolina Gottardo, International Detention Coalition
- Cecilie Kern, NGO Committee on Migration
- Dr Stephen Adaawen, Africa Non-State Actors Platform
- Feblezi Huebi, Migration Youth and Children Platform
- Karanta Fatty, Feel at Home
- Marie Lobjoy, Secours Catholique-Caritas France
- Onyekachi Wambu, AFFORD UK
- Paddy Siyanga Knudsen, Africa Non-State Actors Platform
- Rossy Antúnez, Bloque Latinoamericano sobre Migración
- Yara Hassan, Cross Regional Center for Refugees and Migrants
All the delegates were briefed on the modalities of the discussions, as well as on the collective advocacy outcomes of the civil society thematic dialogues were captured in the Thematic Advocacy Briefs.
Overall, civil society commended the new format, which allowed for more open discussions and direct engagement between Member States and stakeholders. Whilst the informality aspect of the discussions positively impacted the type of interactions, civil society had concerns about around accountability and the impact potential of these conversations. Moreover, given the technical difficulties in providing interpretation due to the format of the Roundtable, the consultations were conducted only in English, which raised concerns about language justice and inclusion.
With overall positive feedback and new energy injected through the new dynamic format, civil society will continue to support and share key contributions with all stakeholders of the GFMD. However, to ensure as much accountability and inclusion of our constituency as possible, the CSM will continue to push for more language inclusion within this format and continue shaping a civil society process that allows for more dialogues with Member States and capacity development for newer organisations engaged in the process, as well as grassroots organisations.
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