RABAT, May 13 | in Xinhua

Morocco’s capital Rabat is set to host parliamentarians from across Africa from May 22 to 24 to discuss the challenges of migration facing the continent, the official Moroccan News Agency reported on Tuesday.

The African Parliamentary Conference on the theme of “Africa and migration: the challenges, problems and solutions” will be held in Rabat, the Moroccan parliament announced in a statement published Monday.

This meeting is initiated by the Moroccan parliament, in accordance with the decisions of the Executive Committee of the African Parliamentary Union, taken at its 51st session in Addis Ababa in November 2007.

The meeting will complement the findings and recommendations of the Euro-African ministerial conference on migration and development, which was held in Morocco in July 2006.

Attended by immigration experts from Africa and Europe, the meeting saw the publication of the Rabat Declaration under which participating countries had expressed their commitment to craft unambiguous policies and to working collectively for the management of migration flows with regard to issues such as security and development.

Organized with the support of Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the conference is also aimed at deepening the knowledge of laws on international migration, according to the statement.

“During the meeting, participants will present their experiences relating to the protection of rights of immigrants, exchange views on regional and international migration and appropriate means to manage and investigate the correlation between migration and development,” said the statement.

The meeting, which will be attended by representatives of parliaments of various African countries, will be marked by presentations by a host of experts from international organizations working in the field of migration, including IOM and the International Labour Organization (ILO), according to the statement.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) as well as the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe are the other organizations expected to make presentations to the meeting.

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