Welcome to the United Nations
As an intergovernmental body, the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) is glad to accept the invitation to provide input to the 2021 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). This report highlights GFMD’s contribution to the 2030 Agenda in general, and to migration-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets in particular.
The GFMD was originally formed in September 2006 in response to a proposal by then-Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, at the UN General Assembly High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development (HLD). Since then, the GFMD has played a unique role as a state-led but inclusive platform for identifying, discussing and strengthening the links between migration and development. With formal roles for participation by civil society, business, local administrations and international organisations, the GFMD allows for the discussion potentially sensitive political matters in a framework that fosters trust between stakeholders. These roles are reinforced through the three Mechanisms, which promote inter-institutional networks and collaborative programs for partnerships. In recent years, most notably over the 2020 Chairmanship of the United Arab Emirates, the GFMD has focused increasingly on the fostering of tangible and concrete partnerships as a way of leveraging the development outcomes of migration.
After the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs in 2015, the GFMD created an ad hoc Working Group on the 2030 Agenda, in order to allow for in-depth analyses of migration related SDGs and targets. Based on requests by the President of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the group, in exchange with GFMD stakeholders, prepared two reports for the High-Level Political Forum in 2017 and 2018 that were submitted by co-chairs Germany and Morocco. In recognition of the importance of the GFMD’s reporting to the HLFP, the ad hoc Working Group was recognised as a permanent Working Group of the GFMD over the course of the 2019 Ecuadorean Chairmanship, and renamed the Working Group on Sustainable Development and International Migration. A report was submitted again under the UAE Chairmanship in 2020, with this current report being once again prepared under the guidance of the Working Group on Sustainable Development and International Migration.
It is no coincidence that the current report begins with a reflection on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrants. The pandemic has presented governments around the world with some of the greatest peace-time challenges that they have ever faced, while placing considerable economic, social and health-related strains on migrants, their families and their communities. The consequences for development have been significant and cut across the goals of the SDGs. Throughout the course of the last 12 months, the GFMD has played an active role in raising awareness among Member States about responding effectively and coherently to the pandemic. In March 2020, the GFMD community organised a series of webinars, subsequently coalescing around a GFMD Ad Hoc Working Group on the Impact of COVID-19 on Migrants, Migration and Development, which presented its report to the online Summit in January 2021. The work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Public Narratives on Migration has responded to the pandemic by organising its campaign against the rise of xenophobia against migrants due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, numerous partnerships identified through the 2020 GFMD Migration Labs focused on ameliorating the impact of the pandemic on migrant communities.
These and many other initiatives are accounted for in this report. The GFMD Troika and the Working Group on Sustainable Development and International Migration would like to thank the International Organisation for Migration and the United Nations Development Programme, and in particular Barbara Sidoti and David Khoudour, for their assistance in drafting this report. Their prompt action has enabled the GFMD to keep its commitments to the 2021 HLPF.
