2015•01•12     New York

Dr. Melissa Siegel from UNU-MERIT recently joined a briefing for government officials at UN Headquarters in New York. She spoke about “migration as a development enabler”, giving particular attention to destination countries.

In her presentation Dr. Siegel highlighted a number of points including the fact that the right to choose for mobility is important, irrespective of whether an individual decides to move or not, that policy coherence is a key tool for linking migration with development; that there is a need for better and more systematic data on migration, particularly return migration which would also help us to better understand circular migration. She also called for more monitoring and impact evaluations of migration and development policies in order to formulate better policies.

The briefing was convened by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) as part of its mandate to provide a forum for policy discussion to States and other actors. As migration is a relatively underrepresented topic of discussion at the UN, the briefing sought to raise awareness on migration and development issues among member states.

The event is timely, as countries are about to enter into intergovernmental negotiations on the post-2015 UN development agenda in early 2015. The session video is now available here