The African Regional Consultative Meeting on the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration opens in Addis Ababa Thursday. The meeting, which will be hosted by the Economic Commission for Africa, runs from 26 to 27 October, 2017.

This African Regional Consultative Meeting on the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration seeks to advance the aims and ambitions of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. In the declaration, steps are set out towards the achievement, in 2018, of a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration.

The global compact addresses target 10.7 of the 2030 Agenda, in which member States committed to cooperate internationally to facilitate safe, orderly, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people.

The global compact will to build on the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 and its recommendations concerning measures to mitigate risks associated with disasters, as well as on the Paris Agreement of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. To this end, the global compact will assist member States to achieve these commitments.

In line with the resolution, and with a particular focus on the role of ECA and its sub regional offices, UNECA is leading the process of consultations in Africa and working in collaboration with IOM and AUC. The various consultations held in Africa have been a participatory process involving direct engagement with officials and experts at national level to ensure that member States bring national perspectives, realities, specificities and experiences into the discussions and reports, and inform subsequent engagements.

The main objectives of the African Regional Consultative Meeting are:

• To provide a forum for Africa to identify and articulate key migration issues, challenges and priorities; identify actionable commitments and recommendations; means of implementations; and identify mechanisms at national, sub-regional and regional levels to ensure coherence and effective follow-up;
• To prepare African countries to articulate their own narratives on migration. The African Regional Consultative Meeting will offer member States the opportunity to articulate the African narrative and to make significant and far-reaching inputs to the processes leading to the adoption of the global compact.

In this regard, the African Regional Consultative Meeting will bring together stakeholders in Africa, including representatives of member States, and international and regional organizations; individuals from the academic sector and civil society organizations; and experts in migration.

The discussions among Member States of the United Nations and other relevant stakeholders will examine regional and sub-regional aspects of international migration and provide inputs, in accordance with their respective mandates, to the preparatory process of the global compact. In that respect, the African Regional Consultative Meeting provides a platform for member States to deal with the barriers that impede safe, orderly and regular migration in the continent, and to come up with ways to leverage and harness the benefits of migration.