Regional Hearing for the Americas. Summary Report

Comisión Mundial sobre las Migraciones Internacionales, México D.F. 16-17 de mayo, 2005.

On 16-17 May 2005, the Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM) organized a Hearing for the Americas in Mexico City, Mexico. The Mexico City Hearing was the fifth and last in a series of consultations that the Commission has held in all parts of the world in the course of 2004 and 2005. The Regional Hearings provide the Commission with an important opportunity to hear the views of a wide range of stakeholders and to gain insight into those migration issues which are of specific relevance to each region. The evidence collected during the Hearings will assist the Global Commission's to prepare its final report, which will be presented to the UN Secretary-General, states and other stakeholders in October 2005.

GCIM Co-chairs Mr. Jan Karlsson and Dr. Mamphela Ramphele presided over the event. The opening and closing sessions of the Hearing were addressed by the Hon. Luis Ernesto Derbez, Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Hon. Armando Salinas Torre, Vice-Minister for Migration, the Hon. Patricia Olamendi, Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Commission members Prof. Francisco Alba, Dr. Mary Garcia Castro, Rev. Nicholas DiMarzio and the Hon. Sergio Marchi. The Executive Director of the Global Commission, Dr. Rolf K. Jenny, provided a summary of the Hearing's proceedings during the closing plenary session. Some 150 people attended the Hearing in total, including officials from 18 countries, as well as eight of the Core Group of States which follows and supports the work of the Global Commission. A variety of international organizations, representatives of NGOs and human rights organizations, the private sector, the media, as well as research and policy institutes, were also present at the Hearing.

The Hearing took place both in plenary and in working panels that involved three different stakeholder groups: (1) governments; (2) regional bodies, international organizations and experts; and (3) civil society, including NGOs, the private sector and the media. The agenda of the Hearing covered four principal topics:

I. The economic dimensions of international migration
II. Irregular migration;
III. Migrants in society and the human rights of migrants; and,
IV. The governance of international migration.

This summary report reflects the general content of the discussion in both working panels and plenary. No statements in the report are attributed to individual participants or delegations.

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