Compendium of Recommendations on International Migration and Development: The United Nations Development Agenda and the Global Commission on International Migration Compared

The Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat is responsible for providing the international community with timely and reliable information on population and development. The Population Division provides guidance on population and development issues, including those related to international migration, to the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, and the Commission on Population and Development. In particular, the Population Division is responsible for the substantive preparation of the high-level dialogue on international migration and development that the General Assembly will conduct in September 2006. Inn the United Nations, a series of inter-governmental conferences and summits convened mostly since 1990 have made a number of commitments and recommendations related to international migration. This report provides the complete set of texts relating to international migration, extracted from the outcome documents of the United Nations conferences and summits. Consequently, this compilation permits to assess in which areas there is already consensus regarding measures that can improve the benefits of international migration and address its drawbacks. In addition, this report presents a comparison of the recommendations emanating from the United Nations conferences and summits with the recommendations made by the Global Commission on International Migration, an independent body set up at the initiative of a number of Governments. The Global Commission, composed of 19 expert commissioners serving in their personal capacity, proposed its recommendations as a framework for the formulation of a coherent, comprehensive and global response to the issues raised by international migration. These recommendations are one of the inputs to the high-level dialogue that the General Assembly will conduct in September 2006. The comparison included in this report is meant to provide Member States with a better sense of where and how the Global Commission's recommendations have broken new ground. This report as well as other information on international migration and on the preparation of the high-level dialogue can be accessed on the world wide web site of the Population Division at www.unpopulation.org. For further information, please contact the office of Ms. Hania Zlotnik, Director, Population Division, United Nations, New York, NY 10017, USA.