International cooperation and shared responsibilities, including regional and situation-specific multilateral initiatives

At the beginning of the first workshop, the IOM Director General stated that “international cooperation is essential to making all of this a reality”. Indeed, one point made over and over again in the workshop was that the entry of IOM into the United Nations system was a positive step towards strengthening United Nations leadership on migration. Beyond the Regional Consultative Processes on Migration that exist in nearly every region of the world and play a critical role in fostering dialogue and cooperation among Member States on specific migration challenges and opportunities, the United Nations has an important role to play in fostering international cooperation. The international community needs to validate and take concrete steps to ensure the effective implementation of existing normative frameworks, as a necessary step towards advancing common goals for international cooperation. The development of voluntary, targeted mechanisms to promote improved migration governance in specific areas of migration, for example on labour mobility, can facilitate the attainment of these goals. Information and best practices should be exchanged among practitioners to allow the identification of shared interests and areas of aligned efforts between different actors at national and international levels. Implementation of joint actions at the transnational level, promoting evidence-based programming by encouraging long-term, systematic and comprehensive data collection and monitoring and evaluation schemes, will be pivotal in this regard.

Sustainable Development Goals:

Reduced Inequalities