APMM joins regional CSO consultation on GCM
The Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) participated in the Consultation of the UN Network on Migration for Asia and the Pacific with Civil Society and other Stakeholders on the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) held in Bangkok, Thailand on February 19, 2020.
In the one-day consultation, international, regional and national civil society organizations (CSOs) and regional offices of UN agencies belonging to the UN Network on Migration gathered to discuss the scheduled regional review of the GCM’s implementation in the Asia Pacific and ensure inclusive meaningful participation of CSOs in both the regional and national processes.
The UN Network on Migration is composed of members of the UN system “who wish to be a part of it and for whom migration is of relevance to their mandates” to provide support to States in the implementation of the GCM. The International Organization on Migration (IOM) is the Coordinator and Secretariat of the Network.
Monami Maulik, civil society liaison officer for the UN Network on Migration, provided input on the over-all structure of the UN Network on Migration in relation to working groups and workstreams related to the GCM, the stakeholder engagement strategies and the Migration Multi-Partner Trust Fund.
Inclusive and meaningful participation became the major thread in the conversation raised during the plenary and even the workshops. Rey Asis, APMM’s representative in the consultation, raised the importance of not only consulting and providing information to grassroots migrant organizations and communities but also ensuring their meaningful participation in the process itself. This is because in the GCM discourse, the grassroots migrants are the major stakeholders. Asis highlighted the responsibility of sending country governments to reach out to their nationals living and working abroad (tapping into the consulates and embassies), as well as of destination country governments reaching out to migrant communities, especially the most vulnerable, e.g. marriage migrants, migrant workers in factories, domestic workers, undocumented migrants.
Two workshops were conducted in the afternoon – one focusing on thematic and capacity building issues that the Network can prioritize in its work plan, and another on identifying working modalities to ensure CSO involvement in the Network’s workplan.
A regional CSO engagement mechanism was proposed as a way forward for civil society to engage and collaborate with the Network and States in the process of overseeing the GCM implementation in Asia Pacific. The Asia Pacific Regional CSO Engagement Mechanism (APRCEM), a CSO platform established in 2012 to engage on sustainable development, was presented as an example.