CSW62 Side event: Maximizing the contribution of rural women migrants

Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,

Her Excellency Ms. Traoré Oumou Touré, Minister for the Advancement of Women, Children and the Family of Mali,

Her Excellency Ms. Teresa Bellanova, Deputy Minister for Economic Development of Italy,

Ms. Louise Arbour, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) for International Migration,

Ms. Laura Thompson, Deputy Director General of the International Organization for Migration,

Ms. Otilia Lux de Cotí, representing the Women in Migration Network and civil society organization MADRE,

I am honored to welcome all of you to this side-event “Maximizing the contribution of rural women migrants “, co-organized by the Governments of Indonesia, Italy and Mali and the Global Migration Group, the GMG, and with strong support from our NGO partners including MADRE and WIMN.

Before we go any further, please note that we have interpretation to French, Spanish and Italian.

Now it is my pleasure to open this event with remarks on behalf of the GMG, that is co-chaired in 2018 by FAO and IOM.

The GMG is an inter-agency group bringing together 22 UN entities working on migration. It aims to promote the application of relevant instruments and norms relating to migration, and to encourage the adoption of more coherent, comprehensive and better coordinated approaches to the issue of international migration.

Let me begin by echoing the words of the UN Secretary-General in his report “Making Migration Work for All”. He said that, when we look at migration, we must remind ourselves of the links between migration and our broader fight against inequality. In fact, SDG target 10.7 on regular, orderly, safe, and responsible migration is part of Goal 10 on reducing inequality within and among countries,

Since UN Women’s excellent chairing of the GMG in 2016, the Group has been increasingly attentive to gender dimensions of migration, and it has elevated the focus of its work on women and girls. We are therefore pleased that today we will discuss ways to maximize the contribution of rural women migrants to development.

As GMG co-chairs, FAO and IOM are working with the other twenty GMG members to ensure that the linkages between migration, food security, agriculture and rural development are considered in current global migration debates. And that migration from rural areas remains a matter of choice, benefiting migrants and their communities of origin and destination, rather than an act of desperation.

Ladies and gentlemen,

As we know, 2018 is a critical year on migration. We hope that today’s discussions will help ensure that rural women migrants, and the communities they come from, are adequately covered in this year’s discussions on migration.

We hope that our conversation will contribute to our collective thinking on how the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration can help leverage the socio-economic potential of rural migrant women.