News

On Thursday 24th October, ICMPD Director General, Michael Spindelegger, spoke at the opening plenary of the Europe Conference ‘From Tampere 20 to Tampere 2.0: Towards a New Programme (2020–2024) for EU Migration and Asylum Policies 20 years after the Tampere Conclusions?’ which focused on highlighting relevant proposals and ideas for the next EU Commission.

The European Union supports the Ecuadorian Presidency of the Global Forum on Migration and Development 2019 (GFMD) through the MIgration EU eXpertise (MIEUX) Initiative, implemented by ICMPD. In this context, MIEUX together with UNDP and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peru, hosted a regional workshop on 16 and 17 October 2019 in Lima.

From 12 to 16 October ICMPD, together with the EU Delegation to Libya and the Libyan Government of National Accord’s National Team for Border Security and Management (NTBSM), co-organised the 5th Civil Society Training Workshop "Advocacy and Awareness-raising Capacities" for Libyan civil society organizations (CSOs) working on migration.

On the occasion of EU Anti-Trafficking Day, 18 October 2019, ICMPD’s Anti-Trafficking Programme stresses the importance of national and regional cooperation and referral to build people’s resilience to human trafficking and ensure an adequate response to trafficking cases.

From the 8th to the 10th of October 2019, and for the first time, trainers from the Lebanese Armed Forces’ (LAF) Central Training Center (CTC) delivered a course on document security to personnel from the United Nations’ Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in their headquarters, in Naqoura, South Lebanon.

Migration ranks among the most important and contested public policy issues in many countries. In this context, the policy development process is often far away from the ‘ideal scenario’ and prone to being influenced by election cycles, public opinion or crisis situations.

From 13 to 16 December, the German-funded project "Migration Awareness Raising in Iraq and Pakistan" (MARIP) will organise a workshop on migration reporting for journalists from both countries. Participants will be selected via a competitive process, which accepts applications until 7 November 2019.

From 30 September to 11 October, ten officers from the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) were trained and certified at the advance level on document security. The training took place at the IDCentre in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

Following the launch of the European Union Global Diaspora Facility, Oleg Chirita, Head of Global Initiatives explores the potential of diaspora engagement for development, scrutinising the history, evidence and rationale of diaspora engagement for development and assessing how ICMPD can capitalise on its experience in diaspora engagement in this new global initiative.

Free movement of labour within the EU has led to unprecedented possibilities for EU citizens to improve their lives by moving to higher-income EU Member States. The consequences for Member States who are mostly origin countries have so far received little attention. Facing increasing challenges on their domestic labour markets, a number of EU Member States have started to develop policies in order to attract back citizens to the country.

On Wednesday 2nd October, ICMPD Director General, Michael Spindelegger, gave a key note speech at a conference entitled "Comprehensive Coordination of the Migration Process" which was held at the National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria.

The International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) gears up to publish its recommendations for the next five years addressed to EU decision-makers. Now is the time for leaders to press the reset button to break political gridlocks on EU migration policy, and come together through pragmatic implementation and innovative cooperation.

To mark World Day against Trafficking in Persons 2019, this ICMPD Expert Voice article puts the spotlight on a neglected and under-reported form of human trafficking in the context of mixed migration: trafficking for forced migrant smuggling. 

The best way to understand the situation on migration routes to Europe is to listen to people who have made the journey. Our latest research study, “The Strength to Carry On - Resilience and Vulnerability to Trafficking and Other Abuses among People Travelling along Migration Routes to Europe”, analyses people’s resilience and vulnerabilities to human trafficking and other abuses in this context. The research found that understanding factors of resilience can help to prevent trafficking, and that resilience can be boosted or compromised by migration policies and practices. 

The continued increase in the proportion of the world's population living in urban areas has placed cities at the forefront for managing migration and its current challenges. Cities are now key actors and partners of choice for regional and inter-regional dialogues on migration, and taking their priorities into account could be beneficial to the migration dialogues in several ways.