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The International Forum on Local Solutions to Migration and Displacement was held by the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality (GMM) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), together with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the UN Migration Agency (IOM), the World Academy For Local Government and Democracy (WALD), the Union of Municipalities of Turkey (UMT), and the United Cities and Local Governments Middle East and West Asia Section (UCLG-MEWA) on 26-27 November in Gaziantep.
The forum under the theme of ‘From Emergency to Resilience and Development’ brought together several local development actors from different countries to share, showcase and exchange good practices on responses to migration and forced displacement at the urban settings between Turkish municipalities and local authorities around the world. The event also provided an opportunity to facilitate city-level partnerships, and contributed to the existing networks of relevant actors in the migration and forced displacement contexts.
Ahead of the first Global Refugee Forum (GRF) that Turkey will co-convene and UNHCR will co-host on 17-18 December 2019 in Geneva, the Forum highlighted how approaches bridging humanitarian and development responses, such as the New Way of Working, have been put into practice to achieve the goals and objectives of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM).
A key outcome of the Municipal Forum was the 2019 Gaziantep Declaration reflecting, inter alia, good practices on the implementation of globally and regionally agreed principles on local solutions to migration and forced displacement. The Declaration will be communicated to the Global Refugee Forum (GRF), the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), and its Mayors’ Mechanism, the Global Mayoral Forum on Human Mobility, Migration and Development and UCLG Congress to feed in these respective discussions.
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