I just found out yesterday, but there actually will be a counter-event to the GFMD after all: It is called “Discussion/Speak Out for Development Justice and Protest Manifestation vs. Migration for Development” and will take place in Stockholm 13-15 May 2014. It resembles the International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR) in spirit, if not in name – the reason being that
due to limited resource it will not be a full-blown global event with participation from all global resources. So, similar to the counter-meeting to the 2011 GFMD in Geneva/Switzerland (another country where the cost of living is not exactly cheap…) many of the participants will be Europe-based, although the list of guests includes activists from outside Europe such as Eni Lestari, chairperson of the International Migrants’ Alliance (IMA) from Hong Kong.
A strong emphasis of the program will be on the situation of asylum seekers in Europe, with situation reports from many countries. The German movement “Caravan – for the rights of refugees and migrants” will be present as well and report from the Refugee Tribunal in Germany, which I have regrettably missed.
In line with the “mission statement” of this blog to cover “all things GFMD” I will try to attend at least some of the meetings with their proclaimed goal to serve as a “venue to expose the promotion of the commodification of migrants and modern-day slavery that the GFMD creates”. The program paper for the meeting also draws explicit links to the last two global events I observed – the United Nations High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development in New York in September 2103 and the 9th WTO ministerial conference in Bali in December 2013. While the first link is fairly obvious, I believe that the second one does indeed merit more attention.
There are also plans for a speak-out and protest action in front of or nearby the GFMD government meeting on May 15, so that is an event I very much will try to cover.
The GFMD, Migration, Development and Human Rights 