IMRF Side Event: Localizing the Global Compacts with a Call to Local Action for Migrants and Refugees

Local and regional governments are at the forefront when it comes to responding to migration and forced displacement and many work to ensure their policies reach everyone, regardless of status, despite their often-limited political mandates and resources. COVID-19 has shown that community-oriented approaches can lead to innovative solutions that can inspire action on a larger scale. This becomes particularly important when the international community faces challenges such as future pandemics and the climate crisis.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) recognize this key role of local governments in their implementation and review. In addition, the Secretary-General’s 2022 Report on the GCM, acknowledges that local and regional government ‘policies have a direct impact on the well-being of migrants’ and ‘often, only local action can fulfil policies and programmes that are developed at the national, regional, and international levels.’

Local and regional governments actively engaged in the negotiations of the Compacts and politically committed to implement them in unison with the adoption of the Marrakesh Mayors Declaration in 2018. Since that date, local leaders have been spearheading innovative responses to migration governance.

On the occasion of first global review of the GCM, the GFMD Mayors Mechanism, co- steered by United Cities and Local Governments, the Mayors Migration Council and the International Organisation for Migration, in partnership with the UN Refugee Agency, will launch a Call to Local Action for Migrants and Refugees, as a collective effort to leverage, support and replicate local actions that implement the commitments made in Marrakech. As part of this effort, so far over 70 local actions have been collected ahead of the IMRF.

This IMRF Side-Event will formally launch the Call to Local Action for Migrants and Refugees, and will be co-hosted by the GFMD Mayors Mechanism partners, together with the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and UNHCR.