Sir John KAPUTIN, ACP Secretary General,

Distinguished Delegates,

Ladies and Gentlemen,



I am very pleased to be with all of you this morning here in
Brussels, and I have a great honor in joining Sir. John KAPUTIN in
welcoming you as you begin a two-day technical meeting, which will
set the stage, and rightly so, for what I believe would turn to be,
a very interesting and lively debate on migration. Your work will
feed into the Ministerial-level meeting on 13th April, which will
bring together ACP Ministers responsible for Asylum, Migration and
Mobility who will take forward your technical contributions;



The ACP Group brings together as many rich and diverse countries as
one can aspire to see around, and this meeting will provide all of
us with excellent opportunity to effectively engage in a purposeful
discussion on a wide range of migration related issues. It will be
important for all of us to focus on how best to strengthen existing
cooperation among governments, and find ways to increase coherence
among all those that deal with migration within the same government
and between different states;



The world of today is characterized by unprecedented mobility where
many countries are increasingly becoming places for receiving,
transiting and sending migrants all at once. While that has posed
new challenges as far as migration management and orderly flow of
movements is concerned, it has maximized opportunities for social
and cultural exchanges, with migration seen increasingly as a
vehicle for positive changes, and provided impetus for countries to
reap more economic and development benefits;



To explain better my earlier point, I would like to share with you
some figures that I consider thought-provoking:



In 2000, Europe hosted the largest migrant population, with over 56
million migrants, followed by Asia with nearly 50 million, and
North America with just over 40 million. Among these three regions,
North America had the highest proportion of migrants in the
population (12.9%), and Asia with the lowest with only (1.4%).
Among all regions, Oceania’s 5.8 million migrants represented
the highest share at (18.7%);



Recent data suggests that even states traditionally thought of as
“immigration countries” are also countries of
emigration. Each year countries such as, Australia, Canada and the
US report significant outflows of persons from their territories.
For example, in 2001, while the US accepted more migrants than any
other country (1 million) nearly 300,000 persons also emigrated.
Australia registered two persons leaving for every three persons
who migrated into the country. In Europe, Germany the country
receiving the largest number of immigrants in 2001 also reported
significant outflows of persons e.g. for every three migrants, two
persons moved out;



As to remittances, migrants living and working in developed
countries sent more than $ 88 billion back to their families in the
developing world. By contrast, we find that in 2002 official
development assistance (ODA) was just over $ 44.4 billion. While
this highlights the importance of remittances as a source of income
and foreign currency for many developing countries, the impact of
remittances have varied across the globe;



Some countries and regions receive considerably higher amounts of
remittances than ODA, while in others remittances play a larger
role in development. In Latin America and Caribbean region
remittances were 4.7 times higher than ODA received in 2002. In the
Middle East and North Africa region, remittances were 3.8 times
higher than development assistance; By contrast sub-Saharan Africa
was the only region where ODA exceeded remittances, and we hence
find that remittances account for only 0.4% of the ODA amount
received (23.8% of total ODA). According to the World Bank, the
total amount of remittances increased up to $ 93 billion in
2003;



Total migrant remittances in 2002 to Africa (including the Maghreb
countries) amounted to $ 18 billion, with Morocco scoring the
second highest figure of $ 2,877 million or the equivalent of 8% of
the country’s GDP. Egypt, on the other hand, Egypt received
the highest amount of remittance with $ 2,893 million but this
represents only 3.22% of its national GDP;



Total migrant remittances in the Latin American and Caribbean
Region in 2002 amounted to $ 25 billion, of which almost 40% was
received by Mexico, the world’s number one receiver of
migrant money transfers. Mexico officially registered annual amount
of $ 11,029 million equaled to 1.73% of its GDP in 2002. The second
largest receiver in the region was Colombia, and the Dominican
Republic. This, however, represents the highest proportion to the
GDP in Jamaica, El Salvador & Honduras (10-16%), while in
Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic they fell just under 10%;



In 2002, the Asia-Pacific region received a total of $ 27 billion
in migrant remittances. India has been traditionally one of the top
receivers with one of the largest sum of transfers ($ 8,411). The
Philippines also recorded a high figure with $ 7,363 or 9.45% of
its national GDP. Pakistan received about half of that received by
the Philippines:



With regard to the technical side of the meeting, IOM has
contributed a paper on migration and development in the ACP States.
The paper draws on IOM broad expertise and long-standing experience
on dealing with migration, and attempts to closely examine the
nexus between migration and development. It recognizes that
migrants can play an important role in the African, Caribbean and
Pacific Group of States;



The conclusions of the conference on Migration and Development from
15/16 March 2006 in Brussels, that are at your disposal here,
outline concrete suggestions how to enhance the positive impact of
migration to development. This conference was organized by IOM and
the Government of the Kingdom of Belgium, in close cooperation with
the European Commission and the World Bank. The ACP Secretary
General and the governments of ACP states have participated in the
conference and made a decisive contribution to the success of the
event.



IOM participated in the 3rd Summit of ACP heads of state and
government held in Nandi (Fiji) in 2002. The summit recognized the
need of ACP states for capacity-building in migration, and urges
partners to devote more resources to developing human resources.
Mobility was seen as a complex issue given its association with the
brain-drain, and a call for action was made for effective
management of migration between ACP/EU states;



More recently, IOM took part in the Benin Conference held under the
theme of enhancing the development impact of remittances. The
conference appealed, among other things, for having conducive
migration policies and creating an enabling environment. It has
requested IOM and others to support the LDCs in implementing
migration for development programnmes, including an international
observatory on remittances;



As you know, the High-Level Dialogue (HLD) on migration will take
place in the UN General Assembly on 14-15 September 2006. This will
be quite a unique opportunity to carry migration forward and have
it occupy the place it deserves by the international community in
the 21rst Century. IOM is actively participating in the
preparations at all levels, and is working closely with its Member
States and partner agencies;



Your meeting today and over the next couple of days will provide a
timely opportunity to reflect on the relation between international
migration and development, and I urge all of you to think about the
key messages and substantive contributions that we would like to
see feeding into the HLD preparations. I invite all of you to
creatively explore useful ways and means that will enable us to
harness the benefits of migration to support human development,
including MDGs attainment. That is going to be a breath-tanking
challenge but together we can make it. In concluding, let me thank
you all for the contributions you are brining in for making
migration a positive force that increasingly contributes to the
benefits of migrants and societies.