The Regional Meeting “Migration, Displacement, and Community Resilience” was organized in Palace of Serbia in Belgrade on 4-5 October 2016 by UNDP. The conference on managing migration for long term positive development impacts gathered representatives of regional local authorities from Turkey, Italy, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Croatia, as well as representatives from central level state administrations and international, regional organizations (UNDP, UNHCR, IOM, ICMPD, JMDI, NALAS, GIZ, MARRI…), and civil society organizations (FPE, Legist, etc).
The conference was organized as a dialogue forum with municipalities and key stakeholders in migration management along the routes of migrants and refugees, aiming to provide a platform for better coordination of local and central level and increase information and knowledge sharing leading to better contingency planning.
The working sessions were organized in plenary sessions, with keynote speakers and panel discussions. In two working days, an introductory panel and six sessions covered the most important topics on migration issues.
The MARRI Representative, Mr. Slavko Dragan Petrovic took part in panel discussion during Session 5 (Fostering decentralized cooperation among municipalities), supporting statements of Mr. Joachim Roth, EU Officer and NALAS representative. Common activities and cooperation between MARRI, NALAS and GIZ were presented, as well as announcement of the new common project MIGRALONA. MARRI was mentioned in discussions as a solid partner with useful links, which certainly is an added value for MARRI visibility and promotion.