9/14/2006

High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development

United Nations General Assembly, 14-15 September 2006

The first-ever plenary session of the UN General Assembly on migration issues opens 14 September at the United Nations in New York, with a focus on ways to maximize the development benefits of migration and to reduce difficulties.

“We are only beginning to learn how to make migration work more consistently for development,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report prepared in anticipation of the meeting. “Each of us holds a piece of the migration puzzle, but none has the whole picture. It is time to start putting it together.”

Conceived and scheduled more than two years ago by the General Assembly, the 14-15 September High-level Dialogue follows a period of intense public attention to the cross-border movement of people, and a quickening pace of multilateral talks on migration.

In addition to the plenary debate, the 14-15 September High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development brings ministers and delegates together in informal round table discussions on themes such as remittances (i.e., monies sent home by workers abroad); smuggling of migrant and trafficking in persons; and partnerships at the bilateral and regional levels.