Resolution on the Global Forum on Migration and Development

Written by ILPS TIA Workshop 16

WHEREAS, the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) is scheduled to be held in Manila in October 2008. The GFMD is “a government-led initiative that is open to all 192 United Nations Member States.” It is described to be “an informal multilateral and state-led multistakeholder process … to identify practical and feasible ways to strengthen the mutually beneficial relationship between migration and development.”

WHEREAS, the GFMD is a device to sell neoliberal anti-poverty and financing strategy. It thrives on the poverty of Third World countries, directs them to institutionalize migration policies as a mechanism for development and development cooperation, and to use remittance as a survival mechanism of the poor in the name of development.

WHEREAS, as an anti-imperialist alliance, it it the duty of the ILPS, to expose this so-called “development” framework thru migration and reliance on remittances as a “development tool” as neoliberal anti-poverty and financing concepts and strategy that thrives on people’s exploitation and miseries of migrants, enhances labor flexibilization and therefore, greater commodification of labor, and only brings Third World countries into the quagmire of poverty because these do not address the root causes of underdevelopment and the massive migration of peoples from poor countries.

BE IT RESOLVED THAT, the ILPS Study Commission Concern #16 join other progressive and democratic organizations, formations and institutions in exposing and unmasking GFMD especially as imperialist and client states are out to maximize profit from the trade of humans as commodities. At the same time, the ILPS resolves to actively support the International Migrants Alliance (IMA), built upon the initiative of the ILPS Study Commission, and mark its first international action and become an outstanding rallying force in the struggle of migrant workers. IMA shall put on notice that migrants of various nationalities have united, are at the forefront of their own struggles against imperialism and its lackeys, and are linking their struggles with those of all other oppressed peoples and sectors.

Adopted/Approved: 19 June 2008