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News & Events Event Reports

Fifth Global Summit: Managing Migration

Publication Date:
21/12/2024
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Cape TownCity-Led PreventionFifth Global SummitMigrationNational-Local CooperationParticipatory Local Governance

— 9 minutes reading time

Introduction

On 3 – 5 December 2024, the Strong Cities Network held its Fifth Global Summit in Cape Town (South Africa), bringing together more than 140 participants, including 60 mayors and governors, as well as city officials, practitioners and partners from more than 90 cities and 40 countries around the world. The Summit included mayoral conversations, thematic parallel sessions and tabletop exercises – providing city officials from diverse contexts with opportunities to share and learn from city-led innovations and approaches to prevent and respond to hate, extremism and polarisation, and maintain social cohesion amid global crises.

The Summit agenda included a parallel session on Managing Migration: How Cities can be both a Welcoming City and Support the Needs of its Diverse Communities. The session built on a plenary mayoral conversation on the first day of the Summit, providing Summit participants an additional opportunity to share and learn from city-led integration practices. Importantly, the inclusion of migration management as a core theme of the Summit responds to requests from cities across the global network for guidance and peer-learning on this challenge, particularly on how to safeguard social cohesion amid unprecedented levels of migration caused by global crises such as conflicts, climate change and rising costs-of-living. These requests, in turn, informed a new Strong Cities policy brief that consolidates learnings from existing city-led efforts for migration management within a rule of law framework into ten considerations for mayors and local governments as they seek to accommodate rapidly changing populations. These will be updated to reflect key findings from this session and the Summit more broadly. 

Featured Speakers

Key Takeaways

This breakout session highlighted four key considerations for migration management:

Awareness Raising, Inter-Cultural Exchange and Education

Ismail Rafeeq, Mayor of Fuvahmulah (Maldives), shared how he, as Mayor, has invested in education campaigns and community gatherings to address misunderstandings and fear-mongering around migration. He shared how the Maldives is host to both a notable number of cross-border migrants, with individuals coming from abroad to find employment in the country’s booming tourism industry, as well as internal displacement, with Maldivians relocating from one island to the other as a result of climate change and/or to find employment. He noted that, as a result, narratives positing migrants (whether external or internal) as burdens on resources are thus increasingly prevalent and have led to violent confrontations. To address this, Fuvahmulah is investing in community gatherings and festivals to acknowledge and celebrate cultural similarities and differences, and tapping into the Maldives’ rich history as a ‘cultural melting pot’ to reinforce that migration has always been part and parcel of the country’s identity and foundational to its current success as a global tourism destination.

Participatory Local Governance

In a case study on how the City of Fuenlabrada (Spain) approaches migration, Deputy Mayor Francisco Javier Bokesa Abia, underscored the importance of involving community members in all aspects of local policy planning and decision-making. He shared that Fuenlabrada has invested in building a multi-cultural platform called the Mesa de la Convivencia (Coexistence Board), which brings together 36 local associations representing the LGBTQI+ community, parents, migrants and other communities, to promote inclusivity and foster dialogue.

The forum is also consulted by the local government as it develops policies and programmes to ensure these are informed by the diverse communities that they affect. Further, the city has invested in citizen auditors, whereby residents of diverse backgrounds are trained and empowered to monitor and report discriminatory practices by the local government. The initiative seeks to create a more equitable environment where citizens feel able to hold the local government accountable and ensure the administration models the inclusion and coexistence that it seeks to establish in the community.

The city decided that whenever there is something that needs to be discussed or done, we cannot do this without community members.

Francisco Javier Bokesa Abia, Deputy Mayor of Fuenlabrada (Spain)

Cyril Xaba, Mayor of eThekwini/Durban (South Africa), also emphasised the importance of consulting and working with communities in the development of local action plans and policies. He shared that, while Durban is home to a large cross-border migrant community (e.g., from Eswatini and Mozambique), it also faces significant internal migration, with residents moving from the outskirts of Durban and the wider KwaZulu-Natal Province into the city centre in search for employment and easier access to public services.

To address this, local officials consulted with community members during the development of the City’s new Integrated Development Plan (2023/24 – 2027/28) to understand how they can improve access to such services across the city, with a focus on its more rural areas, including through better local transport services, urban design and infrastructure. The Municipality hosted public consultations per ward and published a draft strategy for public review and input to ensure it is truly informed by hyper-local needs.

Perspectives from Rural Communities

Landing B. Sanneh, Mayor, Mansakonko Area Council (The Gambia), shared how migration is impacting his community. Rather than welcoming large migrant communities, Mansakonko is losing residents, with young people in particular leaving Mansakonko to travel to Italy and other countries in search for better livelihoods. As a result, the city is facing a dwindling skilled workforce. Mayor Sanneh is now prioritising initiatives that will convince young people to stay in Mansakonko and contribute to the local economy. He added that, as part of this effort, the Council launched a Green City Initiative in August 2024 that seeks to improve residents’ quality of life by strengthening the city’s climate resilience and creating employment opportunities through infrastructure development, in turn seeking to provide incentives for local youth to stay and invest in their local community.

Gertrude Rose Gamwera Buyinga, Secretary General of the East African County and Local Government Association (EACLGA) and Head of Strong Cities’ East and Southern Africa Regional Hub, noted that officials from Mandera County (Kenya) have similarly expressed concern regarding an exodus of qualified professionals from their county, leaving them facing dwindling human resources and skill sets needed within the county government to effectively govern local communities.

Participants agreed that this is a challenge that Strong Cities should address as it continues to develop guidance for cities around migration. There was a particular interest in having Strong Cities work with rural communities to identify and replicate practices for mitigating the impacts of migration on cities of origin, rather than just on host cities.

Strengthening NLC for Effective Migration Management

Participants also requested that Strong Cities partner with cities and local government associations to advocate at the national level for greater support for migration management. This could help address one of the challenges cities face: that they are expected to accommodate rapidly changing populations without the requisite increase in resources or budget. Participants further underscored the importance of strengthening NLC around data collection related to migration and other demographic shifts. They said this cooperation must extend beyond urban centres and include border towns and more rural areas, which are currently largely neglected despite serving as transit hubs for many migrants and refugees. Participants called on national border authorities to work with local governments to better understand cross-border migration and jointly address illegal migration, for example by supporting migrants to comply with the required formal procedures to document their arrival and presence in their new host city.

Next Steps

The parallel session provided Summit participants with an opportunity to share various city-led efforts to support migrant integration within a rule of law framework and underscoring the importance of also looking at the impact on origin communities. Participants recommended that Strong Cities focus on strengthening NLC around migration, whether through hosting targeted national-local dialogues (with a focus on giving border municipalities a platform to engage their national governments), or by including migration as a topic in broader dialogues on city-led prevention. Strong Cities looks forward to working with relevant partners, including local government associations, to do just that and to continue providing city-city learning opportunities on what remains a key priority of the Network’s global membership.

Further Resources

See our new policy brief on this topic and City Spotlights on some of the cities featured in this session:

Other Strong Cities policy briefs and resources include:

Additional reading:

Donors & Partners

The Fifth Global Summit was made possible with generous support from the European Union, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Public Safety Canada, the US Department of State and the City of Cape Town. 

The views expressed in this session report do not necessarily reflect those of all Strong Cities Network members, the Management Unit or Summit sponsors and partners. 

Contact Information 

For more information about the Fifth Global Summit or the Strong Cities Network, please contact [email protected].

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