Emerging Markets on the Move: Press Release from 2018 Symposium

The 2018 symposium on Migration and the Future of Emerging Markets at Green Templeton College, Oxford has issued its conclusions and recommendations in a press release (30 January 2018).  

Commentators often overlook the fact that Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Turkey and a dozen other emerging markets in Asia, Europe and Latin America are major sources of international migrants (India, Mexico, Russia and China alone accounting for more than 40 million). They also overlook the facts that emerging markets are the main destinations of migrants returning from wealthier countries, the main beneficiaries of migrant remittances (nearly $450 billion in 2015) and major players in debates on global migration

Closing the symposium, former Pakistan Prime Minister and Chairman of the Emerging Markets Symposium H.E. Shaukat Aziz said: “My generation excels at kicking cans down the road to be picked up by our children and grandchildren. A year ago, we acknowledged our children would inherit the consequences of our environmental ineptitude. Here, now, we must commit to helping persuade the world to grapple with migration-related issues and we must start in Marrakech”.

The press release from the symposium recommends that emerging markets should endorse the Global Compact for Migration at Marrakech, Morocco in December 2018. Grounded in the UN’s New York Declaration on Refugees and Migration of September 2016, the Compact (which has received less global attention than merited by its potential significance) will, if adopted, provide the world’s first (non-binding) framework for safe, orderly and regular migration.

The outcomes of the Emerging Markets Symposium on Migration and the Future of Emerging Markets will be presented to the United Nations in February. A report proposing actions for consideration by governments, business and civil society will be published later this year.

To read the full press release click here.