Beirut, 12 May 2006 (United Nations Information Service)-- With the issue of international migration gaining more weight at the international level, regional organizations and governments are becoming more attentive to the challenges and opportunities it presents. Ahead of an international dialogue to discuss the multi-dimensional aspects of international migration and development in New York in September, UNESCWA will hold an expert group meeting (EGM) in collaboration with the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs at the UN House, Beirut, on 15-17 May 2006 to facilitate dialogue at the regional level, on the challenges and opportunities of international migration and development in the Arab region.
The meeting will provide a regional forum for the substantive examination of international migration in order to identify ways and means to maximize its development benefits and minimize its negative impact in Arab countries.
Opening at 10:00 am, the meeting will bring together experts from academia and research centers, government officials, representatives of international organizations, civil society and the private sector to exchange views and debate issues that, although region-specific, have significant international dimensions. It is planned that the meeting will generate a coherent report, wherein the regional issues and perspectives are constructed to comply with the requirements of the high-level dialogue of the United Nations General Assembly.
While analyzing examples of good practices and predicting viable opportunities, the meeting will place strong focus on the contradictions and weaknesses in current migration policies in the region, as well as on the challenges of achieving the internationally agreed development goals. In addition, the meeting will address and analyze such prevailing factors of relevance as the coexistence of labor immigration and youth unemployment in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States, the ineffectiveness of national capacity programmes to formulate and implement coherent migration policies, and the potential trade-off between population momentum and the transitory demographic bonus. A special session will be devoted to the implications of the new demography and the emerging new age-structure of population in the region. Within this framework, the meeting is aimed at: assessing the impact of international migration on socio-economic development; evaluating policies responses and actions to improve the implementation of regional and global agreements; enabling stocktaking of lessons learned and best practices of both the sending and receiving countries; and defining a futuristic regional policy framework that would enable these countries to capture the benefits while coping with the challenges.
In addition to its opening and closing sessions, the agenda of the three-day meeting will comprise 7 thematic sessions covering the experience of the Arab Maghreb, Arab Mashrek and the Gulf Cooperation Council States. The themes include: international migration trends and policies in the Arab region; international migration and socio-economic development; temporary labor migration in the Arab region; highly-skilled migration: challenges and opportunities; transnational communities and return migration; remittances: development impact and policy responses; migration in the Arab world: governance, management, and capacity building.