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Main Events Leading up to the UN High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development Migration and Development: An IOM Perspective*

*This is an undertaking by IOM to assemble the main inputs into the UN High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development (HLD) emerging from the different international and regional events on migration taking place in the months preceding the HLD. It is an informal text, aiming at further dissemination of the recommendations of those events and making them more easily accessible. For the sake of brevity, these are only informal summaries of those events and not an official report. For the official record of these events, please visit the websites of these events as provided or contact the organizers.

Calendar Event #22 - Workshop on Female Migrants

General Information

Date: 2-3 May 2006

Place: UN Millennium Hotel, New York

Organizers: UNFPA, IOM

Participants: more than 50 participants including representatives and experts from sending, receiving and transit countries from all five continents, international agencies, NGOs and diaspora organizations

Main Outcomes

The workshop specifically focused on identifying the gaps and challenges through the life cycle of female migrants; looking at migration trends, the reproductive health needs of migrant women, migration and human rights, violence against women migrants and human trafficking of women and girls, filling research gaps relating to migration and sex-disaggregated data, and government policies that can play a positive role in the empowerment of women migrants by promoting gender responsive policies, legislation and programmes.

Regional case studies were also presented giving an overview of migration trends, integration programmes and awareness campaigns of the Mediterranean and Maghreb regions, Latin America, Asia and the Arab states and introducing best practices as experienced by agencies such as IOM, UNFPA and UNIFEM.

The outcomes of the workshop included the importance of gender segregated data collection and ratification of protection mechanisms and stressed the importance of sharing best practices and lessons learned amongst all stakeholders. In addition, the need for coherence in policies among national government ministries, as well as international stakeholders was underlined. Emphasis was also given to bilateral frameworks to discourage irregular migration.

Positive attributes of migration, such as the use of remittances, the transfer of skills and knowledge, the enhanced status of female migrants abroad, were also discussed.

Operational Recommendations for the HLD

The independent experts were invited to provide suggestions and recommendations for various stakeholders with respect to female migration. Such recommendations focus on, among other things, data collection and dissemination, support systems, human rights protection, integration and reintegration of female migrants. The recommendations from the independent experts will be transmitted to the HLD and a copy of such recommendations will be provided on this website by August 2006.

Additionally, UNFPA and IOM published a joint report of all experts' papers from this workshop. A copy of the joint report can be found here: Female Migrants: Bridging the Gaps Throughout the Life Cycle.