VII REGIONAL CONFERENCE ON MIGRATION
Antigua, Guatemala. May 28-31
Report of the International Seminar “Modernization of Migration Management and
Cross-Border Cooperation”
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
January 16-18, 2002.
During the VI meeting of the RCM held in San Jose, Costa Rica, it was agreed that the
action plan of the conference would be divided along three main subject lines: a)
migration policies, b) links between migration and development, and c) human rights.
According to this division, it was included in the Action Plan the organization of a
seminar in Dominican Republic entitled “Modernization of Migration Management and
Cross-Border Cooperation”, that would cover aspects related with two of the abovementioned main lines.
This seminar has added an innovative concept that had never been used before in the
RCM: four member countries were involved in its organization, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, and Dominican Republic. This implied a great deal of topic and logistic
cooperation that was possible despite the distance due to advances in the field of
electronic communications. Later on, during the reunion of the Regional Consultation
Group that took place in Heredia, Costa Rica, a coordination meeting was held with
representatives from those four delegations, as well as with representatives from the
International Organization for Migrations and the Technical Support Unit of the RCM.
After covering a multilateral coordination agenda, arrangements were made to welcome
in Dominican Republic, from January 16 to 18, 2002, the delegations of participating
countries and the representatives of international organizations and non governmental
organizations (NGO’s).
The seminar had the participation of representatives from Canada, the United States,
Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, and
Dominican Republic. Members from the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees, Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, Economical Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Regional Network of Civil Organizations for
Migrations were also present.
This event had a special meaning after the terrorist attacks of September 11 in the United
States of America. Because of this, and due to the urgency to modernize migration
procedures within the international context then, the seminar counted with the
participation of the following Vice-Ministers of Foreign Affairs: Elayne White, from
Costa Rica; Erick Ovalle, from Guatemala, and José Alejandro Ayuso, from Dominican
Republic. Also present were senior officers from the chancelleries and from different
migration organizations from the participating countries.
Moreover, an added value in this event was the ceremony to transfer the presidency from
Vice-Minister White to Vice-Minister Ovalle, during which the Costa Rican government
proceeded to symbolically transfer to the Guatemalan government the Presidency ProTempore of the Regional Conference on Migration.
The importance of this seminar became evident in its final conclusions and
recommendations, which represent a consented reflection of the ideas and concepts
produced by each of the expositions. Contents of those have been previously published
on the web page of the Virtual Secretariat of the RCM.