The CSD Athens 2009 organizers launched the On-Line Dialogue platform in order to facilitate the widest possible exchange of views between Civil Society partners all over the world and to enable interested participants to be informed about this year’s Civil Society Days. The On-Line Dialogue was open between March and December 2009 on the CSD website and during this time, seven core themes where discussed. A summary of the core issues debated follows below.

GENEVA- 18 December 2009 – Greater efforts are needed beyond Copenhagen to tackle the complex issue of environmental and climate-induced migration, says the International Organization for Migration (IOM) as it marks International Migrants Day today.

As world leaders attend the final day of the UN’s Climate Change Conference in the Danish capital to consider signing up to a global deal on climate change that may or not acknowledge its impact on migration and displacement, the reality is that climate change and environmental degradation are already triggering migration or displacement all over the planet. In particular, it is the world’s poorest countries that are bearing the brunt.

November 3, 2009

Peter Sutherland started his speech at the closing plenary of CSD Athens 2009 with a detailed reference to the path up to the CSD 2009.
After discussing the establishment and various issues around the CSD, he continued: “…So we built this fragile issue of the Civil Society juxtapositioned with the main meeting and bringing governments into an engagement, which has been increasing very significantly this year over the last year, for an example, and gradually creating a constructive dialogue, which is dependent upon the CS coming up with concrete proposals and ideas linked to the subject matters which are going to be discussed the following day. Three more hosts have agreed to carry the torch. In 2013 there will be a full re-evaluation.
Issues are very difficult and complicated. In particular they are difficult in the Interface between the CS, which has such a fundamentally important role to play in being a nexus between the actual problems and their solution, and governments who have believed this Forum to be an opportunity to swap best practices, to develop communications between countries of origin, transfer and destination, and to maintain a productive dialogue that will bring about concrete results. There’s more we could do and will do; there’s no doubt.

Demetrios G. Papademetriou, President, Migration Policy Institute

On the second day of the CSD, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, President of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington D.C., gave a talk on The International Migration System Today and in the Years Ahead (see the PPT presentation).

He spoke of the challenge of complex global interdependence and of the place of migration in this context; he referred to a series of basic facts and observations about immigrant stocks and flows, and identified four core challenges:

• The Integration of Immigrants and their Children;
• The need to manage migration (much better) So As to Gain More from Migration;
• The need to be more mindful of the long-term interests of countries of immigrant Origin (And, Less Directly/Obviously, Those of Countries of Destination);
• And the importance of controlling illegal immigration and resisting the irresponsible growth of immigration

He closed his speech by referring to a number of scenarios and made the case for more sensible and responsible policies.

See the full PPT presentation.

Two days of constructive dialogue and deliberation, resulted in a series of concrete conclusions and recommendations regarding the relationship between migration and development; the effects of the economic crisis; circular migration; the need for policy coherence and relevant data; building alliances between civil society actors and the future of the Forum.

This Report was presented by the Civil Society Day’s General Rapporteurs to the Government Forum on Wednesday 5 November, 2009.

 The Report was also personally presented to the UN Secretary General Mr Ban Ki Moon by the CSD Chairman Mr. Costas Gavras.

Download the Report in pdf.

The Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, during the closing ceremony of the Civil Society Days Forum 2009, bestows the “Hestia” Onassis International Prize in Immigrant Integration and Human Development on the Humanitarian Organization “Médecins du Monde-Greece” for its initiative “Open Polyclinic”, tonight at 7 pm at the Astir Palace Hotel in Vouliagmeni. The prize will be awarded by the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Decentralization and Electronic Governance, Mrs. Theodora Tzakri.

The ongoing programme “Open Polyclinic” offers free medical and pharmaceutical care, as well as psychosocial support to groups of immigrants with limited or no access at all to the National Health System and social services. The “Médecins du Monde-Greece” workforce consists of volunteer specialized doctors, nurses, social workers and psychologists, Greek and immigrants, with the help of which, during the last 12 years, more than 150.000 immigrant patients from Iraq, Bangladesh, Africa, Iran, Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine, and Albania have received medical care in the Polyclinics of Athens, Thessaloniki and Chania in Crete.