Title: Critiquing the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and Organizing Migrants
Author: Ramon Bultron, Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM)

Voices from the South E-Newsletter: August 2012

Description:

Launched in 2006, the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) is an UN initiative which seeks to provide a venue for “dialogue and partnerships” among governments and other stakeholders in order to develop policy which “maximizes migration’s development benefits while minimizing its negative impacts.” From its first meeting, however, the GFMD has been subject to intense criticism by civil-soceity organizations which have pereceived it as a tool for promoting labor-export, and a platform for promoting neoliberal, ideological models of “development” where the structural causes of poverty, unemployment, underemployment, and forced migration are left unadressed.

In 2012, the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) released a comprehensive research study mapping the reflections and experiences of stakeholders in the migrant sector and the impact of the GFMD. Ramon Bultron, Managing Director of APMM, discusses the main findings of their report: “Relevance, Nexus, and Prospects: An Impact Study of the GFMD and Its Migration Paradigm”.

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