IOM Director General William Lacy Swing and Deputy Director General
Laura Thompson attended the fourth Global Forum on Migration and
Development (GFMD) which took place this week in Puerto Vallarta,
Mexico.

The four-day event began with two Civil Society Days followed by
a two-day gathering of governments focusing on the this year's
theme: Partnerships for Migration and Human Development, Shared
Prosperity, Shared Responsibility.

The Director General participated in the Common Space Plenary,
which brought together civil society and governments for the first
time within the GFMD, as a panelist in the discussion titled:
"Seeking Solutions: Migration for Human Development–
Enhancing Partnerships".

The Director General presented the handbook Mainstreaming
Migration into Development Planning, produced by the Global
Migration Group – a group of 16 organizations which brings
together the heads of agencies to promote the adoption of better
coordinated approaches to the issues of international migration
– to provide guidance, ideas and suggestions for policy
makers in developing countries to integrate migration into
development planning processes.

The Director General and Deputy Director General also held
bilateral meetings with senior government officials and key
migration and development partners.

IOM Chief of Mission in Mexico, Thomas Lothar Weiss, and
Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM by its Spanish acronym)
Commissioner Salvador Beltrán del Río, presented the
publication and 30-minute video of the IOM funded project
"Promotion and Strengthening of the Grupos Beta and the
Programa Paisano (both created over 20 years ago) as Examples of
Successful Partnerships for the Benefit of Migrants",
developed as a tool to share experiences and encourage their
replication in other countries with the same migration realities as
Mexico, a country of origin, transit and destination.

The Grupos Beta work along the northern and southern borders
helping migrants by providing medical and legal assistance, and
informing migrants of their rights and the dangers along the way;
and the Programa Paisano works on strengthening
inter-institutional coordination to provide better services to
Mexicans returning to their country during the holiday season to
curb abuses and extortions which were common in the 1980s when
thousands of Mexicans crossed the border from the US to visit
family for the holidays.

"Mexico has a long history as a country of origin, transit and
destination of migrants from the region and beyond, and in the past
years has increased the services it provides to migrants. 
Many of these services, such as the Grupos Beta and the
Programa Paisano are unique in the world and deserve to be
promoted as best practices in migration management," explained IOM
Mexico Chief of Mission, Thomas Lothar Weiss.

On the opening day of the Forum, IOM, UNICEF, the UN Country
Representative in Mexico, and the publishing group Random House
Mondadori, presented the results of the photo contest Zoom in
on Migration and Development which called on adolescents aged
between 12 and 18 to provide their personal idea of migration and
development through photographs and testimonies.

Forty photographs and testimonies, including three winners, were
compiled in a book titled: Lo que vemos or What We
See.

A 15-year-old from Zacatecas, Mexico explained her winning photo
of two youngsters standing alone in a field: "My intention is that
those who look at this picture identify the characters with someone
they know and that the viewers reflect upon what, we as children,
see when a loved one goes away:"

The GFMD is a states-driven process proposed by the UN Secretary
General in September 2006 at the High Level Dialogue on
International Migration and Development in September 2006 within
the framework of the General Assembly of the United Nations to
encourage dialogue and cooperation between countries on migration
issues.  Its inaugural meeting was held in Brussels in July
2007; the second and third Forums were held in Manila in 2008 and
in Athens in 2009.

For more information, contact:

Niurka Pineiro

IOM Washington

Tel: +1 202- 684-0559

E-Mail: "mailto:npineiro@iom.int">npineiro@iom.int