GFMD Civil Society Programme 2020

At the end of the Quito Summit in January 2020, the United Arab Emirates took over the Chairmanship of the Global Forum on Migration and Development from Ecuador. The overarching theme chosen for 2020 was:

The Future of Human Mobility: Innovative Partnerships for Sustainable Development

The UAE set out six thematic priorities for the year and proposed six GFMD regional meetings be held over the course of 2020, in partnership with selected Regional Consultative Processes on Migration (RCPs), to bring together Member States and the three GFMD mechanisms (civil society, local authorities and the private sector) to elaborate on them at the regional level.

The Six Themes were:

  1. The Governance of Labour Migration in the Context of Changing Employment Landscapes
  2. Skilling Migrants for Employment
  3. Leveraging New Technologies to Empower Migrants
  4. Addressing Gaps in Migrant Protection
  5. Discussing Approaches to Address Irregular Migration – What Works? What Doesn’t?
  6. Fostering Partnerships to Realise Migration-Related Goals in the Sustainable Development Agenda and Managing the Future of Human Mobility

The 2020 GFMD Summit and Civil Society Preparatory Meeting took place completely online from 18 – 26 January 2021, and the main new feature was that the UAE opened the entirety of the 2020 Summit to all stakeholders.

Throughout 2020, civil society was actively engaging in all GFMD activities, by participating in the GFMD regional consultations and also by consulting and preparing for them with a large number of civil society representatives from different regions. The results of these preparatory consultations were brought into the GFMD regional consultations by a civil society rapporteur.

The civil society interventions in the opening and closing plenaries of the GFMD regional consultations can be found below:

GFMD Regional Consultation with the African Union (AU)
Opening statement by Mamadou Goïta, Executive Director, Panafrican Network in Defense of Migrants Rights (PANiDMR)		English French
GFMD Regional Consultation with the Conferencia Regional sobre Migración (CRM)
– Opening statement by Silvia Raqec, Coordinator, Eje de Migración, Asociación Pop No’j
– Closing statement by Vinicio Sandoval, Executive director, Grupo de Monitoreo Independiente de El Salvador (GMIES)		Opening (ES)
Closing (ES)
GFMD Regional Consultation with the Bali Process – Opening statement by Sumitha Kishna, Director, Our JourneyEnglish
GFMD Regional Consultation with the OECD – Opening statement by Onyekachi Wambu, Director, African Foundation for Development (AFFORD)English
GFMD Regional Consultation with the Abu Dhabi Dialogue
– Opening statement by Maryam Al-Ruwaie, Director, Tafawuq Consulting Center for Development
– Closing statement by Julius H. Cainglet, Vice President, Federation of Free Workers (FFW)		Opening (AR/EN)
Closing (EN)

More information about the GFMD activities and the UAE’s proposal for 2020: