Despite policy constraints and challenges, migration is a huge
potential contributor to economic growth and social development,
IOM Director General Brunson McKinley told Islamic Foreign
Ministers in Islamabad on Tuesday.



Speaking at the 34th Session of the Islamic Conference of Foreign
Ministers (ICFM), he said that globalization is creating almost
unlimited awareness of opportunities and networking possibilities,
while job market openings are multiplying.



“But challenges in the field of labour mobility are being
tackled ad hoc by the international community and the need remains
for a broad and coherent global strategy to better match demand
with supply in safe, humane and orderly ways,” he said.



The conference, termed as the Session of Peace, Progress and
Harmony, was chaired by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid
Mahmood Kasuri. Delegates from 57 Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC) member states took part.



IOM, which has 120 member states and 89 observers, including 19
states and 70 global and regional IGOs and NGOs, is committed to
the principle that humane and orderly migration benefits migrants
and society. The Islamic countries are an increasingly significant
group within IOM and much of IOM’s programme activity takes
place in Muslim countries.



During his visit to Pakistan, Director General McKinley also met
with senior officials and assured them of IOM’s ongoing
commitment to supporting the Government of Pakistan in improving
the management of migration, assisting in developing pragmatic
approaches to combat human trafficking and providing support to
reconstruction efforts in areas affected by the October 2005
earthquake.



The Director General and senior IOM officials met with Minister of
State for Foreign Affairs Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar; Deputy Chairman
of the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority
(ERRA) General Nadeem Ahmed; Federal Secretary Ministry of Labour,
Manpower and Overseas Pakistanis Malik Asif Hayat; Director General
Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Tariq Parvez; and the Federal
Secretary, Ministry of States and Frontier Region, Major (retd)
Sajid Hussain Chattha.



The Director General assured Minister Bakhtiar that IOM will work
on providing support and assistance to Afghan refugees returning
home from Pakistan. As many as three million Afghans are believed
to be still living in Pakistan, more than 25 years after the 1979
Soviet invasion forced millions of Afghans to flee to Pakistan and
Iran.



In a visit to earthquake-affected areas on May 12, the Director
General inaugurated 11 school buildings established by IOM and
funded by Dow Chemical Company in the Jhelum Valley and a
medium-term shelter project funded by the Swedish International
Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) in Muzaffarabad district of
Pakistan-administered Kashmir.



In North West Frontier Province on the same day, Mr. McKinley
performed the groundbreaking ceremony at a UNFPA-funded Tehsil
Headquarters Hospital in Oghi and formally opened an IOM Housing
Reconstruction Centre co-funded by UN Habitat and Ireland in
Abbotabad.



For more information, please contact



Saleem Rehmat

IOM Pakistan

Tel. +92.300.8565967

Email: "mailto:srehmat@iom.int">srehmat@iom.int