GENEVA (30 June 2015) – Over 50 members attended this year’s IDC Annual Member Meeting, held at the Maison des Associations in Geneva, Switzerland. The meeting took place on June 30, just prior to the Annual Consultations with NGOs hosted by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The IDC’s Annual Member Meeting is an opportunity for the IDC Secretariat to consult with our global membership about critical challenges, opportunities, and plans for the coming year. Emerging trends highlighted at this year’s Annual Member Meeting included growing concerns about the criminalisation of irregular migration and the need to work together to push for the expanded use of community-based alternatives to immigration detention. Additionally, the need to strengthen research capacity and to facilitate access to information were highlighted as critical for influencing government migration policy.
During the meeting, IDC Director, Grant Mitchell, pointed to the findings of an external evaluation of the IDC conducted in the past year:
“A staggering 90% of the 77 countries the IDC is working in now have NGOs advocating for alternatives to immigration detention, representing a 5-fold increase since 2009.”
Furthermore, Mr. Mitchell highlighted some important IDC outcomes during the past year, “We met a total of 35 governments in the last year advocating to reduce the use of immigration detention by using alternatives to detention.”
During the meeting it was highlighted that throughout the course of 2016 the IDC will be developing a series of online trainings to further the capacity of IDC members to advocate for changes to law, policy and practice around the use of unnecessary immigration detention.
If you are a member and you were not able to attend the 2015 IDC Annual Member Meeting, please contact us at [email protected] for a copy of the meeting minutes.
