South American delegates who met in Caracas for the VII South American Conference on Migration are this week presenting the Caracas Declaration at the Global Forum on Migration and Development in Brussels.

The Global Forum, taking place this week in Belgium, aims to be the start of a new global process designed to enhance the positive impact of migration on development http://www.gfmd-fmmd.org/.

During the VII South American Conference on Migration held last week in Caracas, delegates from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela called for a comprehensive approach to migration issues and respect for migrants’ rights.

The Caracas Declaration, signed by all participating countries at the end of the two-day meeting, states that the human aspect of migration must be at the centre of all migration policies and programmes.

The Declaration made reference to the positive contributions made by migrants to destination countries and called for the need to guarantee the integration of migrants into the host societies.

The final document also stressed the need to promote cooperation between sending and receiving countries in order to increase development and reverse poverty and social exclusion, the root causes of economic migration.

The Declaration repudiated economic policies that foster the precarious employment situation of most irregular migrants, their exploitation and violation of their human rights.

IOM’s World Migration Report 2005 estimates that some 20 million Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nationals live outside their country of birth, most of them in North America, and three million within Latin America and the Caribbean. Between 1995 and 2000, the net emigration rate for Latin America and the Caribbean was the highest of any region in the world.

IOM’s Migration Research Series confirms that between 1995 and 2003 the LAC population in Spain, mainly from Colombia, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, increased from 92,642 to 514,485, representing 3 per cent of all immigrants with residence permits.

The South American Conference on Migration, first held in Lima in 1999, is a regional process ensuring South America’s access to international mainstream mechanisms for dialogue and agreement on world migration issues.

For more information, contact the Technical Secretariat of the South American Conference on Migration, Email: jgurrieri@iom.int