Chapitre III - UNITAR

The plight of refugees raises complex issues for States as well as for those who
have been displaced. The regime for international protection of refugees,
including asylum, is a separate, distinct but complementary regime from the
process of international migration management, but reference to this regime
is included in the International Agenda for Migration Management to ensure
that refugee protection considerations are given due weight and are not overlooked
in the context of migration management. The Berne Initiative is not
intended to duplicate or supplant the work of specifically mandated fora, such
as UNHCR or its Executive Committee. Rather, it attempts to view the movement
of all persons, including refugees in a comprehensive way, and to bring
to the attention of all Governments the specific protection needs involved as
appropriate.
The Berne Initiative and its outcome, the International Agenda for Migration
Management take due account of the importance of root causes of migration,
but recognize the limitations of seeking to tackle these root causes through
migration management tools and in migration fora.
To enable Government officials and migration experts from all regions of the
world to explore the concept and to elaborate the International Agenda for
Migration Management, a series of regional consultations were held in 2004.
The regional consultations for Africa took place in Addis Ababa (March 2004),
for Europe and Central Asia in Budapest (June 2004), for Asia and the Pacific
in Guilin, China (July 2004) and for the Americas in Santiago de Chile
(September 2004). The engagement of Governments from around the world
consolidated the content of the International Agenda for Migration
Management and the direction of the Berne Initiative process.
In all four regional consultations, participants stressed the timeliness of developing
a process for dialogue and consultation on migration management at
the international level, as migration has become an issue of prime importance
at the national, regional and global levels. As most countries are now countries
of migration, they are showing greater willingness to focus on what
unites them rather than on what divides them in this realm and, as a consequence,
areas of consensus are emerging. The time is ripe to consolidate
these common understandings as a basis for effective national migration policy
and capacity development, and for inter-state cooperation on migration
management.
Participants at all four meetings repeatedly stressed the positive contributions
that migration and migrants make to the social, cultural and economic devel-
The Berne Initiative
Chapter I
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