About Us
We believe that members of civil society are primary stakeholders in migration and development decision-making: they either are or represent: migrants, refugees the diaspora and members of their families on the move or in new countries; people considering the need or choice to migrate; and/or people - communities - who are confronting the challenges of development.
In the context of migration-related development, a myriad of civil society organisations - including NGOS, migrant, diaspora and labour organisations - are dedicated to capacity building, skills and livelihood training, voluntary return and reintegration programming, co-development opportunities, remittances and reinvestment, as well as the full range of community building and other more traditional development projects.
Accordingly, civil society organisations invest heavily in countries of origin to improve education, the availability of decent jobs, health, social security and poverty relief programs, as well as information sharing, awareness raising, and pre-departure orientation to reduce migration that is forced, coerced or otherwise dangerous - including human trafficking and smuggling schemes. By and large, these engagements are not only concrete but also visible and measurable; the work is well-documented in reports to donors and partners, as well as in academic research.
MigrationAndDevelopment.net offers a forum through which these quality field experiences, good-practice examples, advocacy work, events, research and other data may be shared, disseminated and built upon, thereby promoting increased capacity building and leadership among civil society, improved empowerment and protection of migrants and their families, and strengthened rights-based conceptual thinking among policy-makers on contemporary migration and development challenges.
Materials featured on the site have been provided by a host of quality sources and contributors, including the Caritas Internationalis, International Catholic Migration Commission, International Trade Union Confederation, Jesuit Refugee Service, Migrant Forum Asia, Public Services International and Quaker Council for European Affairs, among many others. If you have not done so already, we warmly welcome you to consider joining in making the site useful by submitting materials that your organisation may have as well.
It is our hope that MigrationAndDevelopment.net will facilitate and support operational programming and partnerships within the field of migration and development, increasing awareness of, preparation for and follow-up to, regional and international processes, particularly in the case of faith-based and civil society actors. Most importantly, we are confident in the potential of the site to strengthen our collective activities in promotion of rights-based policies and programming that embrace human dignity.
Guided by the principles of Catholic Social Teaching and the committed, long-term engagement of the Church in both migration and development initiatives worldwide, MigrationAndDevelopment.net is managed and administered by the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC), in partnership with Misereor.
