Last year, we sought inputs from the CSO/NGO community to strengthen the Global Monitoring Report (GMR) with stories that had a qualitative character of how people at community level had coped with the higher food prices due to recent food price spikes. The focus of the upcoming GMR, to be issued in April 2013, is on Rural-Urban Dynamics and the Millennium Development Goals. Clearly, domestic or in-country migration is a major contributing factor to urbanization. However, migrants’ expectations of better job opportunities or better quality and easier access to service delivery do not always materialize. Even though basic living standards, as measured by the MDGs, are often better in urban areas than in rural areas, this cannot be generalized for all residents of urban areas. Rural-urban migrants are quite often the ones who face a more challenging environment, particularly when expectations of finding a job are not fulfilled. Ensuring access to basic services, such as those defined by the MDGs, for everyone living in urban areas is one of the major challenges governments and citizens alike face during the urbanization process. GMR 2013 has set itself the task of bringing together a body of knowledge on this subject, i.e. how to make urbanization work for all.
The GMR team is once again calling on the CSO/NGO community to provide us with stories about how migrants have dealt with settling in urban areas and with the various challenges they are confronted with. Do read the GMR 2013 Concept Note and we hope we can count on you again to provide us compelling and informative stories from the field. Look forward to hearing from you on gmr@worldbank.org.
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