Secretary Hillary Clinton is hosting the second Global Diaspora Forum tomorrow (on July 25th and 26th), in an emphatic recognition of the importance of the diasporas in fostering America's diplomatic and financial relationships with their countries of origin. (The size of diasporas in the US is anecdotally mentioned to be somewhere between 60 to 70 million - we don't know for sure and even worse, we don't yet have a consensus on the definition of diasporas.) To make the event accessible beyond the beltway, many sessions including the Secretary’s remarks will be livestreamed on state.gov. Also some parallel diaspora events are taking place at the same time - for example, a Tedx style event is hosted at the University of Minnesota. I understand that key State Department colleagues involved in the diaspora forum have reached out to Canada, the UK and the EU seeking collaboration on diaspora and development issues. Bravo!
At a preview meeting today, it was clarified that the Forum is not for benefitting the diaspora, but for fostering development back home. Indeed the theme of the Forum is "moving forward by giving back" the emphasis being on "giving back". An important collateral benefit of this event is the participation of several related departments - Commerce, Peace Corps, DHS - who rarely sit around the same table.
While advocacy for and raising visibility of the diasporas' role in development is the obvious and wonderful benefit of this Forum, for the second year in a row, the key challenges that need to be addressed in future are how to scale up small-scale partnerships with the diaspora and indeed how to get to the right individuals and groups in the first place.
As an aside, today is the first time that I received an invitation to today's preview meeting on the Forum not as a World Bank economist, but as the host of Peoplemove blog. Peoplemove has arrived!
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