News

ICMPD Director General Michael Spindelegger met with Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Innovation and Growth, His Excellency Tomislav Donchev on 24 June 2025.

As African youth become a vital force for progress, innovation, and sustainable development; the Rabat Process stands at the forefront of this strategic migration dialogue. On 13-14 May 2025, Nigeria and Spain co-chaired in Abuja a meeting on Youth, Education, and Innovation: Driving the Future of Migration.

ICMPD facilitated the first session of Moldova’s IBM Working Group, launching the drafting process for the 2026–2030 IBM Programme and bringing together key agencies to shape the country’s future border management strategy.

Cabo Verde is situated about 570 kilometres off the coast of West Africa, and 1,500 km to Spain’s Canary Islands – the closest and first entry of potential migrants into Europe. That route along the Western Atlantic is treacherous. But given its geostrategic location between Africa, the Americas and Europe, Cabo Verde may have become a transit point for organised criminal groups and their activities and a transit route for migrants from West Africa en route to Europe.

ICMPD Director General Michael Spindelegger met with Ireland’s Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration Jim O’Callaghan, and Minister of State for Migration Colm Brophy to discuss strengthening work together on the country’s migration priorities. On 14-15 May 2025, Mr Spindelegger and Deputy Director General Sedef Dearing were joined by senior ICMPD staff as part of their first official visit to Dublin, following Ireland’s accession as ICMPD Member State last year.

Moldova’s IBM Council met on 27 May to review progress and kick off the 2026–2030 border management program. The new policy document will be developed with SCOP project support, aligning with EU standards for smarter and safer borders.

ICMPD successfully hosted the 12th International Summer School on Migration on 29 June-4 July 2025 in Armenia.

ICMPD held a Train-the-Trainers session in Chișinău, piloting a new risk analysis curriculum and preparing future trainers from Moldova’s Border Police and partner institutions to strengthen national training capacity.

10 years of the VMC; 10 years since Europe’s migration crisis — ICMPD is hosting the 10th Vienna Migration Conference (VMC) on 21-22 October 2025. EU Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner and Commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Šuica will deliver virtual keynote messages before several senior government figures take to the stage, including Jordan’s Minister of Interior Mazin Abdellah Hilal Al Farrayeh and Sweden’s Minister for Migration Johan Forsell.

The 4th EU Global Diaspora Facility’s Future Forum brought diaspora organisations together with public institutions and policymakers from four continents to share practices and explore how inclusive partnerships make diaspora contributions to development in countries of origin more effective and sustainable.

The Vienna Migration Conference (VMC) on 21-22 October 2025 hosted discussions on the role of international partnerships in managing sustainable migration, global efforts to attract skills and talent, ongoing progress and challenges in implementing EU reforms, and return and reintegration in diverse contexts. This year’s VMC gathered over 300 delegates from government, the private sector, academia and research, think tanks, international organisations, and civil society.

ICMPD is advancing the operational practices and legal safeguards for migrants and asylum seekers crossing Moldova’s borders. Working with the country’s Border Police and the Ombudsman Office, ICMPD hosted a workshop and consultations focused on human rights at the border, including entry and exit, data protection, and asylum safeguards.

ICMPD has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Bangladesh to strengthen its strategic engagement and cooperation in the areas of border management, promoting regular migration, preventing irregular migration, and combatting human trafficking. The partnership includes bilateral and multilateral dialogues, as well as support to human and institutional capacity development of relevant border and migration agencies in Bangladesh.

Workshop in Chișinău brings together law enforcement institutions to finalise 2025 national report

ICMPD co-hosted the International Border Management Conference with the Ministry of Asylum and Migration of the Kingdom of the Netherlands on 18-19 November 2025. The event addressed border management challenges including digitalisation, border security, capacity building for operational staff, and transnational crime while advancing effective, human rights-based solutions.

Two high-level side events held in Addis Ababa highlight African-led efforts to operationalise migration frameworks and promote regional integration.

The Network of Anti-Trafficking Coordinators of South-East Europe (NATC-SEE)¹ gathered to develop and exchange solutions on human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and labour exploitation including of foreign nationals in the region. At the meeting in Sarajevo on 13-14 November 2025, members of the network provided updates on their recent and upcoming regional collaborations to support victims of human trafficking; as well as case studies on identifying and prosecuting trafficking cases.

Officials and delegates from 39 Budapest Process countries and 12 organisations met in Istanbul on 26–27 November 2025, hosted by Türkiye as Chair. The 37th Senior Officials Meeting, since the dialogue’s launch in 1993, called for prioritising return and reintegration, legal pathways, and stronger law-enforcement cooperation.

Director General elect Susanne Raab stressed the need for genuine alternatives for migrants to ensure access to legal pathways, to protect them from human traffickers and migrant smugglers. Ms Raab emphasised this at the second International Conference of the Global Alliance to Counter Migrant Smuggling in Brussels on 10 December; which opened with a Keynote Speech by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Three regional migration Dialogues are further strengthening the responses to human trafficking and migrant smuggling across African and European routes. The Khartoum, Rabat, and Niamey Processes marked an important milestone in interregional cooperation to enhance policies and cooperation to align with realities on the ground, ensuring that responses to these crimes remain fit for purpose.

ICMPD commemorates this year’s International Migrants Day, ten years after the so-called migration crisis of 2015, an event that has left profound marks on the political and social landscape of Europe and its neighbouring regions. The crisis and a series of subsequent events shifted discourses and posed growing challenges that called for agility and innovation in policy responses.

Migrant smuggling and human trafficking are among the most complex and urgent challenges shaping mobility between Africa and Europe. Both crimes are highly adaptive, continuously evolving in response to political, economic, and technological shifts. They thrive on structural inequalities and systemic vulnerabilities fuelled by conflict, socio-economic disparities, discrimination, human rights violations, governance gaps, political instability, and climate shocks. As these conditions intensify globally, they expand both the number of people at risk and the geographic scope where victimization and exploitation can occur.

Susanne Raab joins the International Centre for Migration Policy Development as Director General, effective 1 January 2026.

ICMPD Director General Susanne Raab met with HE Mr Vincenzo Mascioli, State Secretary for Migration of Switzerland on 13 January 2026. The meeting reaffirmed the strong partnership with Switzerland, a founding ICMPD Member State and long-standing strategic partner, and provided an opportunity to exchange views on key migration challenges in Europe and beyond. Discussions focused on Switzerland’s migration priorities and ICMPD’s strategic direction for 2026; and key areas of cooperation including Ukraine, the expansion of the Migration Resource Centres, and the Swiss Chairmanship of the Rabat Process in 2026.

ICMPD Director General Susanne Raab met with HE Minister of Interior of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Mr Rebar Ahmad, to sign a Cooperation Agreement in strengthening strategic engagement in the areas of migration management, reintegration, and capacity building.