Partners in Population and Development (PPD) welcomes the efforts of GFMD and other stakeholders and is committed to the spirit of New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants in pushing the agenda for adoption of a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration. We congratulate Germany and Morocco as the co-chairs in 2017. Morocco is a PPD member country.
PPD, an intergovernmental organization was constituted as an outcome of the ICPD, Cairo, 1994. Bangladesh, Morocco as past and present co-chairs of GFMD respectively are member countries of PPD. Many countries from the global south in this summit are PPD member countries who have expressed the views mentioned in this intervention and we acknowledge Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Mexico, Senegal present in the room.
Referring to the paragraph 7 of the Final Draft Resolution on Modalities for the intergovernmental negotiations of the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration ‘taking into account different realities, active participation of all relevant stakeholders, convening of national multistakeholder consultations and participation in global, regional and sub-regional platforms’, PPD’s Inter-Ministerial mechanism representing 60% of the world’s population has defined migration as one of the strategic priorities of PPD affecting the population and development issues of countries from the global south.
Why is South-South Cooperation important?
PPD reiterates the importance of the inclusion of South-South Cooperation on migration agenda due to its increasing and wider impact on development assistance, trade and investment, infrastructure development and remittances.
South-South Migration accounted for over 37 per cent of global migrant stock, larger than South-North migration at 35 per cent. There is the upward trend in South-South trade, the foreign direct investment flows into the global South and international migrant remittances which continue to outpace official development assistance by a wide margin.
In particular, PPD wants to emphasize the framework of South to South Partnership, through greater support for capacity building, encouraging commodity & technology transfer, policy and advocacy/dialogue, knowledge sharing, developing partnerships and population diplomacy.
PPD encourages the use of existing models, policy tools, instruments and institutional arrangements within the sending and receiving countries and a greater role of the regional and global intergovernmental organizations from the global south for policy coherence. In particular, capacity building of the national research and policy institutions has to strengthened in the spirit of the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
PPD also encourages the need for accounting of the contribution of the Global South to the Global North.
PPD brings its experience from past annual Inter-Ministerial Conference of PPD, recent most held in Dakar (Nov 2016) that dedicated a high-level panel session on social cohesion of migrant population sharing country experiences on promoting migrant-sensitive health policies and programs. PPD member countries’ priority to migration is reflected in the upcoming 14th International Inter-Ministerial Conference on Population and Development themed: Sustainable cities, human mobility and international migration: A South to South Perspective and intervention needs that will be held on 28-29 November 2017 in Jogjakarta, Indonesia.
PPD respects the situation of the developing countries from the global south with competing priorities and faced with emergencies in all areas of population and development issues most of the time. Every forum/meeting presents critical statistics in the area of their respective work. PPD respects the sovereignty and decision made by the countries/ governments and policy makers based on the situation of their countries urging the burden of exceptionalism of a particular issue to give way to multi lateralism and multi stakeholderism taking human being as an entity.
Member countries from the global south are at the center of migration issues, and strengthening continued engagement in countries through national institutions is paramount.
Thank you
Delivered by Ms. Vibhu Garg, Counselor, PPD Geneva