On 16th of May,  Minsk hosted the National consultation on Global compact on safe, orderly and legal migration under the auspices of IOM Minsk Mission, Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Interior.

Basically, Belarus has become one of the first countries to start national consultations on Global compact on migration (GCM), sitting all stakeholders at the one table: governmental and non-governmental agencies, international organizations, representatives of Diasporas and business sector, and academia.

Participants discussed migration-related issued within three thematic groups: 1) irregular migration, 2)forced migration and 3) migration and development.

After discussions group moderators presented their recommendations at the plenary session. Actually, the list of recommendations developed at the national consultations will shape the priorities of the Republic of Belarus and become the basis for the position of the country on GCM. National consultations results can help define priorities and form the position of the Republic of Belarus on GCM and can be further used by the Belarusian Government during their participation in the next stages of GCM development.

Alina Narusova, Regional Specialist on Politics and Liaison, pointed out that

“Global compact is a historical opportunity to create frameworks for global migration management, that will ensure protection of the migrants’ rights, safe and managed migration, decrease of forced migration. National consultations are a tool that ensure that the GCM is grounded on the reality”.

Alina Narusova also paid attention to the fact that Agenda 2030 will also serve as the basis for GCM and at the same time GCM will serve as a tool to achieve SDGs that are related to migration. According tot he expert, in order to enhance the effectiveness of the GCM,

“it’s very important to use mechanisms that have beem already developed like MiGOF – operational frameworks for migration governance, developed by IOM and agreed by its state-members. MiGOF is the first internationally recognized document that defines conditions for good migration governance and, basically, defines what is the good migration governance”.

The event was organized with financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kingdom of Norway.

Background information:

Modalities for the intergovernmental negotiations of the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration were agreed by UN member-states in New York on 30 January 2017.

According to Modalities:

• IOM has a leading role in the preparatory process;
• 6 thematic sessions are defined (April-November 2017);
• Mexico will host the Coordination meeting on consultations results in November 2017;
• The draft document of Global Compact will be presented in February 2018 and will serve as basis for intergovernmental negotiations in New York on March-July in 2018.

IOM’s vision:

General position of IOM that reflect IOM’s vision of GCM:

• Migration as a matter of choice rather than necessity;
• Migrants’ rights should be protected during the whole circle of migration;
• Migration governance is effective, and migration is a positive aspect of migration.