The IDC recently attended the Global Forum for Migration and Development (GFMD), in Geneva, which included two civil society days and a half day with the 160 governments present.
This was the first year that irregular migration was a major theme at the GFMD, with the issues of criminalization, rights and family-based migratory frameworks also central.
Civil society concerns continue to be raised regarding the lack of a normative global governance framework on migration, that GFMD sits outside a normative/UN system, and that migration continues to be viewed from a national security lens and not on human security and protection.
Immigration detention was a key point of discussion, including the urgent need for alternatives to immigration detention. The IDC intervention on this is listed below.
With few IDC members attending, and immigration detention, refugee, asylum seeker and stateless persons not a core agenda item, it was beneficial to have the Secretariat attend. IDC Director Grant Mitchell was asked to be on the writing team to develop the statement to states attending, and this included a call to states to not detain vulnerable groups and to explore alternatives to immigration detention.
A big thank you to the Internation Catholic Migrant Commission for their great working in organising the GFMD Civil Society Days.
