The History of ICMPD
The idea to create ICMPD was launched among a small circle of European government representatives, gathered at the initiative of Switzerland, in the autumn of 1992. Western Europe was at that time in the midst of an asylum crisis, requiring innovative collective measures to reform asylum and refugee reception systems. Migration from and through the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe was on the rise and the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina had led to mass displacement, requiring international burden-sharing. At the global level, it was recognised that growing north-south migration pressure will be a major issue on the political agenda for the next millennium.
From the 1950's until the mid-1980's, the multilateral fora dealing with migration in a European context were mainly the Council of Europe, OECD, ICEM/IOM and UNHCR. Informal consultations (now IGC) was created by Sweden and some like-minded countries in 1985. It worked together with the UNHCR to tackle the emerging asylum crisis. An EC/EU co-operation on immigration and asylum was initiated in 1986 in response to the new internal market system and establishment of external EU borders. The EFTA (European Free Trade Association) countries also initiated a move to make immigration co-operation level with that of the EC. Radical changes in Central and Eastern Europe gave birth in 1991 to the Vienna process (incorporated by the Council of Europe in 1994) and the Berlin process, which later became the Budapest Process. Existing institutions, such as those mentioned above, worked to upgrade migration-related activities. Read more...
