 for engagement. And we decided to do so in a very original way. That is by asking some diaspora experts how, according to them, diaspora engagement could, should or would evolve in the 10 to 20 years to come. So we gave them as much freedom as possible in terms of tone, in terms of style, and in terms of thematics. And this is probably why the result for exceeded our expectations. And we are particularly glad that most of them are with us today to share their views on the future of diaspora engagement because the reality is that without them, we would never have managed to bring such an original project to life. And we do hope that the articles that are presented in the future of diasporas, at least some of them, will excite your curiosity and maybe trigger some fresh reflections, some new practices such as the use of foresight when it comes to diaspora engagement. And either way, we do hope that you will appreciate it. Thank you very much. Monica, over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Karina. I hope you can hear me just checking. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much, Karina, for these words. And my name is Monica Gorach. I'm the director of the Migration Management Department at ION Headquarters. And it is also, for me, a pleasure to welcome you to this launch of this new publication, The Future of diaspora, edited by Adept IOM and iDiaspora. It is indeed the result of this publication offering unprecedented effort to bring together 12 experts from multiple fields to share their views on how diaspora engagement will look like in the next 10 to 20 years. I think these different experts from members of civil society, academics, policy makers, private sectors, they raise really interesting questions and present innovative arguments and depict also new opportunities. And I think each of these pieces really contributes to a better understanding of how the economic, human, political and cultural capital of diaspora represent the true potential for development diversity and economic growth. And certainly new challenges will arise, which diasporas will be called to contribute to. The difference we can make is to recognize and increasingly recognize diasporas as development actors. And we need to keep enabling effective channels of cooperation and coordination and capacity development. And the future of diaspora looks precisely at this, how to better empower diaspora as development actors in the coming years. How can we further institutionalize the relationship between diasporas and other actors at the global, regional, national and local levels? How will technology and hyper-connectivity further impact diaspora engagement? And today we know that diasporas contribute to sustainable development through knowledge and skills transfer or social and civic engagement and cultural exchange. So we want to facilitate mechanisms for coordination and effective transnational engagement of these communities. And we need to keep on working to ensure that the talented, the committed and the younger members of diaspora keep building partnerships and bridges across countries. And we have a framework to do so. The global compact to save orderly and regular migration, it reflects a commitment to improving cooperation with and for transnational communities. With objective 19 of the compact, in particular, states have committed to creating conditions for diasporas to fully contribute to sustainable development by ensuring the full and effective implementation of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. And this task will be carried out by integrating migration to development planning, acknowledging the multidisciplinary contributions made by transnational communities to societies and collaborating across sectors and countries. We're only a few months away from the first international migration review forum, the IMRF, in 2022, which for the first time, since the adoption of the global compact will bring around the table all adopting states and partners to assess what progress was made since 2018. And this will be an important milestone and presents us with the golden opportunity to keep building on past achievements, but also to address the shortcomings with new strategies and new plans to further engage, enable and empower diasporas to become agent and accelerators of sustainable development. So let's not wait this opportunity. I think we really have the possibility to make a difference in what is coming up and in gearing up towards the IMRF. So before passing the floor to the authors and facilitate of the session to Roberto Cancel, I would like just to take a moment to thank all the authors for their very enlightening and inspiring contributions and wish you all a very interesting discussion. I won't be able to stay the whole time because it's a time where there's meetings like there's I think three meetings at the same time set by the UN in New York. I don't know if they think that one piece goes to one meeting and the other goes to another or how we do that, but I look forward then to hearing about the discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much Monica and then Karim for those excellent welcoming words. So with no further ado, we'll begin the first session and it is my pleasure to moderate the session with two of our distinguished authors. The session is going to be looking at diaspora policy and we're going to count with the participation of Kingsley Icons, founder of the Networking Institute, who has several decades of experience working with diasporas and not only the Irish diaspora from his native country, but also helping governments and other actors around the world through through policy and technical assistance to develop diaspora policies and support implementation of different diaspora initiatives. Also on the panel, we have the pleasure to to count with Professor Dr. Anna Margaritis, who is a reader in the International Relations at the University of Southampton with expertise including transnational migration, international political economy and foreign policy, and she also has publications that have appeared in several books in a wide range of journals. Welcome Kingsley and Anna. So we're going to begin with a question for Mr. Icons. So my question would be in your article and you suggest that there are that there will be a differentiation between the nation and the state and the former will be based on a global sense of belonging. Can you unpack this idea a bit and how this might affect the way governments approach their diasporas? Thanks Roberto. I've got five minutes right so I'll speak quite fast if you listen quickly and I'm speaking here on behalf of my colleague Dr. Martin Russell who is a co-author and I guess basically what we're saying there was an old great line in the film which said the future ain't what it used to be. So we're looking at a future of incredible and dramatic change. There's going to be extraordinary turbulence and disruption but also there's going to be some opportunity. McKinsey put a report out recently saying that 100 million people between now and the year 2030 in eight countries are going to have to switch occupations so that just gives you a sense but one of the interesting things that COVID and technology has resulted in is that it's now more important what you do than where you are. That's kind of an interesting notion. In the old days your geography dictated your identity. If you lived in Southern California that's who you were but now actually you can live in Southern California, be engaged with Portugal or Peru or Poland. You can be here and there, you can be transnational, you're connecting sort of instantaneously, constantly, extraordinary what's happening now. In the old days when you left you were gone, you were gone forever. Absence equals exile but now it's a bit different and it's really important what you do. We now say the old days your geography was your destiny and now we say geography is history. You can be here and there transnational and that brings up all sorts of implications and interesting opportunities and a manifestation of this is that the difference between the state and the nation as your question posed the state being kind of lines on a map but the nation being a kind of a global notion. I experienced it when I worked with the Irish diaspora because the genesis of the organization I worked for which was all over the world was that there was such a thing as an Irish empire not built by military might or force of arms or we haven't won a battle since the year 1014 so we're not that militarily, we're not even planning on invading anybody soon but we have an empire which is interesting and that empire has got all sorts of different manifestations and Martin and I put together this notion of countries and regions and cities have diaspora capital and this is the resources available to them through this kind of empire which all these countries have and that's made up of three flows so the people flows of money and flows of knowledge in Ireland we have a constitution the diaspora are listed in our constitutional hip at the Department of Foreign Affairs we have the Irish abroad you know we we have money which we give to organizations around the world all of this sort of stuff is a kind of a government acceptance an interest in this notion of kind of having that that global global connectivity through this kind of global empire if you like the programs tend to be public programs and private programs the government tend to support the most vulnerable in the Irish diaspora at the same time they're always seeking out the most successful in many ways and we take the model of the U.S. university alumni model which is such an incredible way of connecting with their diaspora if you like and the way they do it is through connecting with all of their diaspora in a modest kind of a way at the same time focusing on a small number of people who could make quite a massive contribution we have one member in our diaspora just one person in our diaspora who invested two billion U.S. dollars in the Irish educational system a guy called Chuck Feeney he's worked in many countries so every country kind of has to find if you like their sort of Chuck Feeney but here's the interesting thing I think our government's increasingly realizing this it's not about countries it's about place and that place could be a city it could be a county it could be a town it could be a village I mean a couple of years ago I did some work for the Copenhagen Goodwill ambassadors the network of ambassadors a good network of business people around the world who are supporting the city of Copenhagen and earlier this year Martin and I did some work in Bosnia for USAID which was a project to attract Bosnians from overseas in the tech community to come back to Bosnia and to set up technology companies and what they discovered is that they didn't actually want to go back to the big cities they thought they'd go back to Sarajevo the big cities no they want to go back to the city the region the area from which they originally came from or their forebears came from so it was that kind of intense locality you know we have a lot of counties in Ireland and we find that each county is developing a diaspora strategy so technology is allowing this we're finally been able to answer the question which has always been the great question about diaspora engagement which is who are they where are they and what are they doing and technology is now allowing us to do this so we can actually really sort of filter right down to drill right down and find this connectivity which as I said earlier is all about place but this notion it's this notion of belonging is something which always fascinated me because we talk a lot in the business world about diversity and inclusion but I'm watching what's happening now a lot of companies are talking about diversity, inclusion and belonging and belonging is this really powerful emotional connectivity and you can be as diverse as you like you can be inclusive as you like but if people don't have a sense of belonging to your organization then it's not going to work at a sort of a maximum level and we found finally that in our diaspora engagement we needed to we always needed to find three elements we need to have a great case there's got to be a really strong reason why people can it would want to engage back whatever that might be might be commercial might be emotional might be cultural might be religious so you need to have a great case you also needed to to have a constituency you need to have that information and that on where these people are and then and and finally you needed to have in many ways this is the most important thing we discovered you needed to have leadership people who could inculcate that sense of belonging that sense of pride that sense of emotion of connecting people back with their country of origin so I've just on my time right down five minutes here Roberto I'd hate to abuse the the system and also the unfair to my fellow authors of the book so I will hand back to you now thank you so much Kingsley that was a great response and thank you for minding the time very pleased now to pass the word to Dr Marjorie Teese the question that I have for you is regarding your article you note many overarching trends in diaspora engagement among countries in South America in this sense would you see a benefit in regional net level cooperation among countries in the region in the future thank you Roberto and let me thank also the entire team for the opportunity to collaborate I'm very glad to join you today um in this important publication and an event um um uh the short answer to your question um is yes absolutely I see benefits of this um sorry I'm checking if I got cut off we can hear you your video is a bit frozen but we can hear you just fine hello can you hear us I was responding to your question about regional cooperation with a definite yes it's quite important it would bring benefits I had to say for South America the diaspora engagement policies are a relatively new issue in their agenda these are countries that have seen themselves historically as countries of immigration so he had taken them in this area um and they have done so in the last three decades um in so it is about time that we actually have a comprehensive assessment of results in um and what might happen and with uh with the outcomes of this uh this policies um there hasn't been a clear monitoring and systematic way of assessing the results so I think the dialogue the sharing experiences the um assessing results in a comparative fashion that will also help to identify best practices and in academic research when when I um ask policymakers and do you know what ex-country have done on this and and they they usually are not aware of of this so I think moving in in that direction of regional cooperation to share experiences and and knowledge would be a a good way to move forward um then I would say also it's timely because South America had an intense period of a multilateral cooperation on migration in general in the early years of this century and then um that somehow faded a little bit um due to the crisis in uh in the last few years um one of the main issues was the triggering of unilateral responses when the massive flow of um Venezuelans uh happened in so countries fell overwhelmed in and then we see more um or a bit of a shift towards more unilateral measures rather than uh maintaining those spheres of cooperation and multilateral coordination that they had in the past um and then of course the the pandemic hit too and on top of that and and so we see more of a um move towards a a national responses rather than coordination across the region so it will be timely also to to push for more a dialogue at the regional level because of that reason and a couple of other uh trends are to be mentioned here because um there is something on the nature of these policies that requires cooperation uh we are um talking of reaching out to uh part of the population that resides in the territory of other states right and we still live in a in an international system characterized by the principle of sovereignty so um engaging in implementation of policies and playing politics in the territory of others obviously it requires at a minimum level a coordination with the host state but there are also more than coordination there are opportunities for um cooperating and maybe even improving the the relationship with those host states uh and there will be um more opportunities if we expand the areas in which engagement is is uh carry out um in that sense Latin America has a an opportunity here to do intra-regional cooperation like the one you were referring to um because in the last few years the side of migration that has uh increased is the intra-regional migration then uh part of their diasporas is in neighboring countries or or in the countries within the region so it makes total sense to cooperate with those in in the neighborhood but uh also South America maintains a strong historical corridors with other regions namely North America and Europe and then um some of those uh diasporas reside far away but in countries that are strategic in terms of development for for South Americans so it makes total sense to also engage in cross-regional cooperation for this reason and finally I will make a point about maybe how we understand we understand cooperation because usually we use this term that refers to um a correctly to um a international cooperation and by definition that happens between nation states um I would say we may need to be more innovative uh on that um in then uh perhaps uh include a number of other actors social actors that are totally relevant for development in many areas we we would need the input of say uh business groups in in the case of trade um bankers in the case of finance uh scientists if when it comes to knowledge and other things so um we need to expand the notion of cooperation perhaps to collaboration of or partnerships or or other that could be more suitable um and then including that dialogue the the input of of these actors um that would be my answer and sorry for the technical problem with the video thank you no no no problem at all um luckily we could hear you pretty well I think you cut in and out a little bit but I think you know your messages and your points are very clear um and thank you so much for those insights um and in fact we we are hoping to work with uh the countries in South America so a regional project to actually address some of the issues you brought up so fingers crossed and wish us well um so that is a wrap for our first panel uh we will have time for questions and answers at the end but also welcome any uh our participants to share questions and comments in the chat and the authors um will be available also to answer through the chat um with that I'll pass the word on to my co-moderator Larissa Lara for the second panel thank you all again thank you Roberto so it's a pleasure to present this panel on social capital belonging and diplomacy so I I kindly invite our authors from this panel Bashir Ahmed and Emira Ajeti to put on their cameras first um so we we will have a discussion um so the first question would go to Emira Ajeti who is an expert on diaspora engagement with over 13 years of experience in bridging the gap between public and private sectors and I think it's very important to to mention that private dimension for the future on diaspora specifically so thank you so much Emira for your very insightful um and very creative article so the question to you is in your article you highlight the importance of inter-generation dynamics in diaspora engagement in your opinion what kind of essential steps governments and other actors must take to ensure that second third and even further generations feel that sense of belonging that we have been talking about to their countries of heritage and empower them as development actors thank you so much Emira thank you Larissa can you hear me well just checking before I start yes oh perfect uh thank you for the introduction um I'm definitely honored to share the floor today with global experts who have devoted their careers on uh understanding diaspora engagement and congratulations to you both um I diaspora and I am as well as adapt on the publication um yes uh throughout um with the article uh that I contributed with I was trying to explore um sense of belonging uh that comes from basically all dimensions of my life of uh being part of diaspora myself of working with diasporas of understanding diasporas when I was a little girl and also what's uh kind of an influence diaspora I had uh from the countries of my origin which are both Bosnia or Sugovina and Kosovo and um it's definitely a very positive notion but it's also a very changing concept and same applies to diaspora engagement it's very interesting to see how diaspora engagement has changed throughout years I did not have a lot of room or maybe time to explore that in the article hope to do that at another time but to answer your question I think that thanks to technology nowadays as also other fellow authors mentioned there is definitely a growing range of opportunities to develop ties to the homelands for next generations and all actors including governments and other private sector actors uh need to explore that further and also um adapt that engagement with a lot of care and sensitivity um also I believe that a representative diaspora engagement approach is that essential part to ensure that second third and further generations feel a sense of belonging to their countries but also the empowerment as developers from the work that I've done with various governments something that I've noted thus far is that often governments end up communicating with few groups and individuals of certain diaspora that are not necessarily representative of that diaspora and and we know that diaspora is not a unified group or motivated by a single agenda so basically the efforts of direct promotion of investment and so on to diasporas in that way are often misplaced beyond that a little thought is given given to involvement of next generations and to understanding what is important for next generations so basically if you look at the trends nowadays we can see how forthcoming generations of diaspora are closely watching what everyone is doing and they navigate the space of diaspora engagement um understanding that they have an ability to influence the change of what they want to see in the world hence ensuring that diaspora work is done through caring available actions that promote equality and inclusivity are very important to future generations and that's a crucial basic step that all working on diaspora engagement have to have in mind so basically all actors working on diaspora engagement need to acknowledge that next generations of diaspora have their own ways of transnational engagement in culture in arts in climate change tourism which provide basically an interesting lens to the agility afforded to diaspora work by technology it's important for governments in particular and other actors to know what young generations care about because as the needs of future generations change so will the concept of diaspora engagement I've tried to give some examples of how that can be done in the article though it took me a while to explore the identity of diaspora members abroad and how they come to be defined there is some work that I've done with my other colleagues on diaspora engagement in Mauritius and it was interesting to see how there is a great potential of both music and dance as two important intangible cultural expressions and in that context young Mauritians can be seen to mix old or traditional elements of Mauritian music and dance with the newer or modern music and dance styles from their host countries and therefore they have a sense of belonging and proudness of promoting their Mauritian heritage abroad this is just an example of creating a platform to allow diaspora next generations to mix home and host elements and capitalize on fun and immersive ways to explore their stories abroad there are various other examples of engaging various women networks and also having professional network engagements for next generation of what is important to them so basically I think that the future of next generation involvement is bright but we need to understand that sense of belonging for them and explore it and have fun with it because new generations will be the future of the world in many ways and so it will also have a great influence on diaspora engagement and how the country's origin will develop in the future I'm not sure if I made five minutes or but I'm happy to you did a great job summarizing all the holistic approach and all the contributions I think it was a fantastic answer so thank you so much and I'm sure we will have time for more discussion after but now I would give the floor to Bashir Ahmed who is the executive director of Shabbaka and she also has a very creative article divided in different sections and I really enjoyed it thank you so much Bashir so in your article you present three scenarios of diaspora engagement in the future what you think is the likelihood that countries like Sudan will adopt a comprehensive approach to diaspora in the coming decades or and what factors do you think this will shape this possibility thank you so much Bashir oh okay no thank you and good morning and good afternoon to everyone it's a pleasure to be here with such a stellar panel and yeah it's I really enjoyed the article and Amira I could not agree more with what you had said about you know second and subsequent generations there needs to be a different approach it's quite interesting I think if this event was taking place last week I would have maybe had some different responses however this week where Sudan is one of the the main examples I used in the article there's been a military coup so it really changed the scene but maybe I can articulate how is the Sydney's diaspora responding as well just to kind of understand the importance of looking generationally but also looking beyond you know just the dichotomy of origin and settlement countries I think what's kind of quite important and I think this is a risk that you kind of see with a lot of countries they see remittances figures and they're thinking how do we get more of this in our pockets and it's very much focused on development it's focused on financial engagements however you need to look beyond that what else are the diaspora contributing what else they bring in terms of knowledge sharing his skills and this is also for government in settlement countries this circulation of knowledge is so important as well to what you bring to that country so in terms of the you know the Sudan example we have to look at you know and not just in Sudan but in other countries you need to start looking at okay what's the short time gains yes but also what is it in the longer term that you want to see and there's numerous examples of how the diaspora provides support economically socially you know politically in different contexts as well and the framing for example about you know the GT and such and you see that risk and you've seen it it's like oh you see GT to do that sometimes they don't have the language so even in terms of just kind of gauging the numbers there's no way to capture what the numbers are of the second or subsequent generations it's very much it senses if you're born in origin country that's one way to kind of articulate it so countries need to just kind of framing it there's a lot of now in more research now coming out in terms of that kind of differences in terms of generationally and what all the needs are the second element is not to have the just financial focus what we've seen in terms of our own research at Shabaka is increasingly the second and subsequent generation and this is you know well documented is there tends to be a significant drop in terms of remittances however they are contributing in other ways so think of them as your social capital in terms of skills access knowledge in the Sudan example at the moment during the 29 during the revolution two years ago the second generation played quite an important part in terms of like media raising awareness about the situation and we're seeing this this week as well so you know a lot of the second and third generation kind of like engaged in these in terms of raising awareness about the situation in the country the other element we kind of put in the article is a lot of the policies a lot of the engagements very much focused yes on the first generations but is also tend to be focused on you know in terms of gender tends to focus more on the needs of you know you know men rather than looking at kind of more comprehensively at women you know women looking at boys girls so there needs to be that kind of intersectional lens is needed looking at issues of you know some people might have disabilities and also kind of like also protection so diasporas are not all just given but there's also needs as well so that needs to be articulated much more and third another element is most of the research and work is of what is the diaspora in this particular settlement countries relationship with the origin countries so what is the diaspora in the US relationship with you know the origin country say Ethiopia but the relationship is a lot more complicated than that and I think that needs to be recognized as well so you'll have a you know Ethiopians who for example wanting to support Ethiopian refugees in Sudan or in other regions so I think we need to start to just understand that much better and and finally settlement countries as I mentioned yes let's look at this triple win as Gopalan said you know it's for migrants for countries of origin and you know countries of settlement or destination but again I think there is a lot of opportunities to look at intergenerational you know that kind of generational engagement the Irish example is a great example of that where they kind of looking at you know the you know dealing with the fifth generation and such so I think if we can start encouraging research and work in that particular way I think there's a lot of opportunities for that I will just leave it at that but happy to respond to any questions on this particular topic but thank you so much thank you so much Bashir it was also very insightful and great to have you here without any further due I will pass the floor to Roberto who is going to share a video that was prepared by another author who unfortunately couldn't make it today we know we are all busy and in the space scattered we have our own diaspora of diasporas with this publication so thank you Roberto thank you Larissa yes indeed I'll be sharing a video from one of our authors that also because of time zone issues very difficult for her to join the video is by Almaz Nagash who was named one of the 100 outstanding Silicon Valley women of influence in 2020 for her work in social innovation and in 2010 she founded the African diaspora network to inform and engage with African diaspora in the US so I'm going to now share my screen and hopefully you all see the video hi I'm Almaz Nagash with the African diaspora network I'm delighted to join you even though it's all virtual but I wanted to just say thank you to Karine and team IOM for inviting me to contribute to the future of diaspora publication I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of the global diaspora leaders and friends and really congratulations to all for putting this together today I'm joining you from Silicon Valley where we are located the African diaspora is located in California to be specific in Santa Clara County and the city of Santa Clara we've been in existence for 11 years and growing we started very small with the idea and the question actually mostly question then answer how do we get how do we bring Africans and friends of Africa together because I've always believed that the diaspora is a force for good in that as you all know Africans from the diaspora contributes the most money to the continent in fact to to be clear three times more than what Africa gets from USAID or other even direct foreign investment and so if that's the case then one has to ask the question why can't we have a say on what goes on in the continent and in the communities in which we live in my paper I do mention I wanted to make a differentiation that I was looking at it from the contemporary diaspora perspective but the bigger picture for Africa is it's much more than that we've got historical African diaspora who have left the continent to pursue not necessarily opportunity but it was mostly not even to pursue anything it was slavery and they were traded to the United States and other parts of the world it is not about differentiating us in terms of historical and contemporary I give examples to some of my friends who ask the question if I if my son who happens to be a first generation Eritrean-American if he gets stopped by a police in the streets then he nobody asks him whether he is Eritrean-American the they he is an African-American and so you see the roots are pretty much connected there is an incredible buying power of the black community in the United States it's estimated 1.3 trillion in 2018 according to the US Census and small business ownership is 2.6 million blacks owned small businesses in the US and yet and yet and this is where the challenge comes they there are only fewer than 1% venture backed or founders in the US so it tells you that there's tremendous lack of consistency between the years that African-Americans have been in this country and the opportunities that it's bestowed to them and inequity is rampant in the US and pretty much striking in so many ways but I do feel that we have an obligation and a really truly a responsibility to engage African-Americans at least at least in the work of the African diaspora network where we started a new program called accelerating black leadership and entrepreneurship and we're going to use that it's actually mostly African-Americans that are part of the cohort the first cohort but our goal is to increase this as we go forward this is the first one and we're not going to stop we'll continue to do it so there's an opportunity for us to continue to engage and I think for IOM2 to look at the global diaspora the global African diaspora is very critical because you never know who's going to be supporting that individual in the remote villages of Ghana or Kenya when it comes to disaster and other opportunities that people can give back or support some of the work of IOM and other multilateral agencies efforts in the continent so I do believe that we have an opportunity and this is not a one-off we have to continue to engage with each other at the end of the day you know we are human race and we belong with each other to each other it is not about our color it's also about the what we bring to the the table and I look forward to working with each and every one of you and I wish you the very best the publications by all of you I've done the best I can to read and I'm sure we will continue to share them with our network and I wish you the very best evening day morning whatever you are thank you very much and now we'll go straight into the next panel which is on the economic capital and entrepreneurship amongst diaspora and again I have the pleasure to account with two illustrious speakers on this panel and the first that we'll be speaking with is Leon Isaacs who is the founder and chief executive officer of DMA Global and international development consultancy specializing in diaspora investment diaspora engagement and international remittances he's an economist in a banker by training and has over 35 years experience in this in these areas and is acknowledged as the global expert and thought leader in remittances and financial services for migrants they are a second speaker again one of our authors is Manuel Orozco who is currently director of the center for migration and economics stabilization at creative associates international he's a senior fellow at the inter-american dialogue a fellow at the institute for the study of international migration at harvard university and a senior migration and remittance advisor for the international fund for agriculture or agricultural development mr. Orozco is also chair of central america at the united states foreign service institute at the u.s department states welcome to you both to the panel and so my first question is to mr. Isaacs so your vision of a joint government diaspora programs where diaspora knowledge and expertise are used to design the varied vehicles to facilitate diaspora investment and beyond is quite interesting could you share any examples of these kinds of programs you've seen in practice and if so how did they evolve and again apologies for the short time but we do have five minutes to answer that question okay great thanks Roberto for that very kind introduction good afternoon to everyone from from where I am anyway so it's it's great to be on this panel and congratulations thanks for the challenging question and before I answered that specifically I just wanted to maybe set the scene for why I'm giving the answers that I have and also for the article and I think the key point to remember is that this whole premise was based on and we're looking into the future so you know I could give a very glib answer and say there's not many examples but the good news is there are some and we'll come to them in a minute it's new it's very it is it's a it's a fall winter and I got a super cute hot pink dress hello can you mute your mic apologies there you go thank you that might well be more interesting than what I'm talking about but anyway I'll carry on so I think my premise really is based on a number of facts you know first of all obviously countries of origin need to and will continue to to raise funds and actually the diaspora themselves have shown over the years a great propensity to support their country of origin and often more than other entities have and one assumes that will continue into the future some interesting contributions on that earlier thirdly many diasporans have savings and potentially considerable wealth although when we don't know exactly how much this is around the world the World Bank estimated all of 10 years ago now that there was at least 400 billion dollars worth in diaspora savings accounts it would be really interesting to see what that is now and then I think the other fact that we shouldn't forget is that some diasporans indeed many have considerable skills in the finance area so you know one of the things that we've seen more often now is that many countries actually recognize these facts and have tried to attract wealth or financial support and contribution from their diasporas and this has been done with varying degrees of success over the years often one of the main challenges is that the countries have developed financial products that they think or assume are attractive for diasporans rather than actually talking or engaging with them to find out if this is the case and there have been a number of less successful projects where governments have tried to impose financial solutions on diasporans and it just hasn't worked so in the future it will clearly be much better if governments and diasporas are able to work much more closely together and I really think governments should talk and work with diasporans to create specific products and policies around the whole area of finance and let's face it at the end of the day we'll all be more inclined to support products and services that we've actually had a say in designing or at least anticipating that they would meet what we want so you know I think from that's the sort of background area but I would say it's quite an embryonic area but there are some examples so to actually get to your question Roberto that that we're seeing quite recently indeed I think a number of you may be familiar with a product introduced by the government of Pakistan under the Pakistan remittances initiative called the Roshan Digital Account so this is actually an initiative promoted by the state bank of Pakistan and it provides for digital onboarding and banking solutions for millions of non-resident pakistanis and pakistanis with wealth that they've declared is abroad and it's aimed at those people who are looking to undertake banking payment and investment activities in pakistan so it's an all in one easy to access account which begins a much more complete relationship between the diaspora and the country and in a little over a year it's already attracted over two billion dollars worth of savings to put that into contact that's about eight percent of pakistan remittances so I think by any measure we would say that's been quite successful and it was actually really developed after some extensive consultations with pakistanis overseas and has gone through a number of iteration and development phases a lot of research and I think you can see in the result that it covers multiple areas it's not just about attracting money into savings account or buying government bonds or stocks as a whole series of other things you can do and benefit including applying for housing finance loans on cars and so on so it's it's like a complete financial service and I think serves as an interesting example for for a number of countries another area where we're seeing some work with the diaspora it's always difficult is in the case of Nigeria I think famously Nigeria government raised 300 million dollars in 2017 through issuing a diaspora bond again this was designed promoted and supported with help from certain sections of the diaspora and actually it took quite a long time to come to the market was quite successful there were some problems with it as well I have to say and I think these are the areas where a lot of these initiatives have to be long term and totally two-way and so I think there's a lot of lessons learned from that that can be shared elsewhere perhaps a third perhaps a third example I'd say is in the case of the Philippines I think everybody knows that the Philippines have had a very well developed program of engaging with the diaspora particularly for sending remittances but this has now been expanded to other areas and in the last three months they recently issued a progressive retail treasury bond so it's a domestic bond but it was issued using a mobile app in conjunction with a number of partners and was purchased from Filipinos in 24 different countries all investing relatively small amounts on average about 10 000 Filipino pesos and I think what that sort of shows is that actually in many ways if a government like Philippines wanted to raise finance he's got a lot of options it deliberately chose to work with the diaspora which may not have been the most profitable for it at the time but actually to build those links and bonds with that group for future investments and a lot of the funds were used to address some of the consequences of COVID-19 so it was very much about using a financial product to help raise money but also to bring the Filipino diaspora into actually playing a part in growing the country and we know there are other nations like Indonesia and so on that are also doing this so or looking at this at the moment so it is starting to grow so Roberto I think this is it feels like a very long answer to your question but hopefully you see there are a number of things that are happening but I would really say we're at the embryonic stage and what we need is much greater engagement between the government and the diaspora bring the diaspora in not just for their money but for their brain power to help design some of these initiatives and hopefully what we can really end up with is something that involves both parties and ends up in a win-win for all so I might stop there and hand back to you Roberto thank you so much Leon I think those are excellent examples and yeah gives us hope for for the future as well now I'll pass the word directly on to Mr Roscoe so the question for for you is in you in your article you refer to the liquidity and investment capacity of diaspora communities and that these are like likely to increase in the future do you feel governments are doing enough to facilitate the investment potential of diaspora and if not what do you think are the main barriers they face and what concrete steps should be taken in the future to lift them again if you could keep it to five minutes that'd be most appreciated Mr Roscoe thank you very much and I'll I'll take some of the the time from Leon um well I think that your question is an illustration of how the three markers of what I see the future of diaspora are shaping policy and global linkage we have significant uh I see the future of diaspora shaped by three main dynamics cup death and ubiquitousness the the scope of it is that it's a global growth of human mobility both resulting from a demand for foreign labor particularly high-skill labor but also because of the the current trends in the in the global context of state fragility all over the world that are making migration increasing in a larger scale just this year uh two million latin american migrants have left their home countries and for some countries it's two percent of their population the magnitude of this um outflow just in the time of the pandemic is just some precedent but also signaling a major pattern that is taking place um 10 years after the global recession of 2009 but one of the issues that results from this is that the death of transnational engagement which are I characterize as I typically call it the five days of integration in the global economy through uh transfers of money transfers of capital telecommunication nostalgic tourism and nostalgic trade and increasingly magnified in not only in terms of the volume of uh money that has been transferred but the way that these engagements are having in the home countries economies uh is becoming now a reference for economic policy for many developing countries and in hoax countries too and one of the consequences of that is I think precisely the ubiquitous nature of the diaspora in the modern world so today basically belonging is constitutive of creation design innovation in manufacturing um it is very difficult and I think kingsley was referring to this earlier to to not picture a company today a transnational corporation that not only doesn't hire uh foreign born people migrants with skills uh high skills or low skills um but also that does not manufacture commodities that have uh an element of diasporic identity in them um you know t-shirts designs of of automobiles among other things come with a diasporic sense of belonging um and you know that one of the byproducts of this is that the speed at which this is going is overwhelming governance and so um one of the illustrations of that is precisely the extent to which migrants have a demand for investing back home but the demand is not met by policy and leon tried to sort of um you know illustrate the best cases but at the same time telling you that we are found falling behind uh because it's just you know there is a in my work with migrants from latin america but also uh from internationalities african and some asian community um 20 percent of the foreign born population have an investment capacity and they are unable to invest uh in the conventional way that is to apply for a loan and leverage their savings with future investment because the the enabling environment is not there and so it's not that governments are unwilling but they have been overwhelmed in the first case is that the diasporic engagement for governments is not a priority because of the significant demands of how they're being overwhelmed by a number of challenges uh that they are dealing with one of them is the pandemic uh at this point in time it's just political stability another one is the obsolete model of economic growth so diasporic engagement is still uh not a problem not not a priority to them however it falls into the role of the private sector to really take the proactive role of engaging the diaspora and here is not only the role of the financial sector but the financial sector has a major um capacity to integrate the demand for investment by the global economy by the the global diasporas uh to adapt new forms of financing to these communities transnational loans for example R1 development that is moving in that direction some financial institutions are seeking to partner with banks in home countries and host countries in order to share the risk of providing investment opportunities um the bonds is just one more of those examples but what is missing still is the need for governments to create incentives as well as enabling opportunities the I think um the the dynamic is always imperfect the the you know there is a process of learning adaptation and rejection rejection will come from many conventional financial institutions and private sector entities to reluctantly understand how to integrate investments from the diaspora but at the same time because we are in a digital global world many of the investment partners are by nature becoming diaspora individuals themselves so the governments are at a point in time in which they are trying to understand and make policy along those lines um it's going to take quite quite some time I think introducing regulations enabling the financial sector to cater to these communities is the first mile approach for example in the united states we have the community reinvestment act the home countries could adopt this type of legislation in order to allow for example for greater financial inclusion especially for those households that have a transnational linkage those transnational linkages can then be utilized as a way to leverage investments at the transnational level financial institutions are still lacking the possibility to do so because the legislation doesn't allow them so um this is one of the areas where governments could do um motivating them to take the risk to enact those legislations is really important but again government is reactive so the challenge remains more on the side of the private sector and I think financial institutions are at the core of this reality thank you excellent point thank you so much Miguel for for those Manuel insights it's very much appreciated and I have the pleasure now to know I always got my finger I'm sorry mr. Orozco now I have the pleasure to pass the word on to Larissa for the final panel thank you Robert and thank you for again the very insightful contributions it's my pleasure to introduce the last panel on human capital and innovation so I will give the floor first to Ronit Avni who is the founder and chief executive officer officer of localized Ronit it's a pleasure to have you here and thank you for your contribution your question is the following from your experience what are the new and emerging ways in which technology can further facilitate the transfer of human capital such as knowledge know house uh know how an experience sorry from diaspora professionals to their communities of origin thank you thank you so much Larissa it's really an honor to be here and to be with all of the other authors my passion point is this question of transferring what I would call knowledge remittances which some have referred to as social remittances so we're in a new reality today with internet penetration mobile connectivity where where you live as Kingsley had stated earlier is less important than what you know and what your willingness is to share that knowledge if it's channeled correctly so I think we're in a very very exciting moment we're having diaspora communities rather than being considered brain drain as they had been in the past can now be considered assets because they have expertise they have experience and exposure to either sectors or scale that they might not otherwise have had had they remained in their country of origin and then the question becomes how do you channel that expertise back to the communities of origin so that they can benefit from that knowledge wherever it is and I think that that's now entirely possible so um just to speak on a personal level and of course what we do is only one example of that um my company localized really grew out of that question which is how do you channel those knowledge remittances home I share the view that Kingsley had expressed earlier that diasporas can function the way alumni networks do in elite universities diasporas especially those that have been successful are particularly well positioned to be able to share their insights to be generous about those insights and to contribute and there's been quite a bit of research around the fact that people are more willing to give of their time and their expertise than they are of their money so if the remittance economy and someone would probably know the most up-to-date figure last I checked it was about a 600 billion dollar annual economy if that's the remittance economy and we know that people are more willing to give of their knowledge it means that the knowledge remittance economy is actually bigger than the remittance economy and then the question is how do you channel it so the good news is that the technology exists to do so and the other good news is that those diasporas who've gone abroad who've become successful they do want to give back to their communities of heritage and they're particularly motivated to help the next generation which is students again like alumni to their alma mater so the work that I do every day is an example of that where we partner with universities in emerging markets and we partner with top industry experts who share roots with the students anywhere in the world to be able to share their expertise and then we bring employers on that can actually hire the students and often the employers have diasporas within their ranks that service the cultural translators and cultural ambassadors that make it easier for companies to enter new markets and to be able to hire talent remotely so that that talent can stay in country but still be part of a global economy these are new trends I would say that COVID has accelerated that dramatically in the last two years you're seeing massive openness to hiring remotely and with that hiring internationally so one data point that's not in my chapter because we didn't have it when the chapter was written is that we had surveyed almost 300 employers from 25 countries over a one-year period from May 2020 to May 2021 and we surveyed them three times and what we found which was unsurprising is that remote positions grew significantly from eight percent to 48 percent which you would come to expect in under the conditions of COVID what's interesting is that tracking alongside that companies were more willing to hire internationally it moved from 15 percent of companies hiring international talent to 43 percent of their hires being international so what we found is that when companies go remote they go international and that presents a huge opportunity for diaspora populations to connect jobs to connect industry expertise back to their communities of origin on a policy level one thing that I would strongly recommend especially to those governments that are considering how to better engage their diasporas I had seen in a number of countries surveys that were being created to figure out where their diasporas existed mapping exercises to know where the concentrations of talent pools exist and my strong recommendation is that it is more valuable today to know the expertise of your diaspora communities and what they're interested in talking about or contributing and their availability so knowledge passion and availability instead of what is their profession and what is their address which was the old way of gathering information about diaspora communities because you are much better off channeling that expertise and that passion remotely than trying to incentivize those diaspora and experts to move back the odds of them moving back are extremely low and in the chapter I give some examples of countries where grants were issued where incentive structures were laid to try to get academics and scientists and researchers to move back and no one in fact did so but if you ask those very same scientists and researchers and academics would they be willing to teach a class in their mother tongue would they be willing to share their expertise remotely the answer to that was resoundingly yes so I'll stop there but happy to take questions afterwards thank you so much I think it was a very good intervention highlighting not only the trends the impact of technology but that passion effect that diasporas are moved with this passion it's a fueling of this transnational action so thank you so much Ronit and I think it leads us to our next speaker who is Salim Fakir executive director of the African Climate Foundation and the question is for you goes as follows the potential of diaspora communities to support climate action that you highlight in your article is not often discussed what is the reason behind this according to you and second how can we generate more visibility around this important area of engagement and facilitate increased engagement in the future thank you so much thank you very much and just to congratulate the sponsors of the the book it's a really excellent piece of work and in fact I'm not an expert on diaspora but I've learned enormously just by sitting and listening to other speakers it when I got the request to actually do a piece on climate change and diaspora I think everybody here would wonder how does climate change and diaspora fit in and it's not it should not be unfamiliar partly the reason for that is that when there is droughts and other kinds of weather related impacts on the continent it's very clear that remittances would go towards supporting families in places where these impacts are happening and so that's just one dimension in which climate issues actually manifest and in which diaspora who are outside of the continent are asked to assist families particularly families that are highly dependent on agricultural production as a way of living and livelihoods so climate is real and the issues that affect people on the continent is related to challenges of being consistently in a pattern of poverty trap and in this way it's sort of a burden on not only governments but also families outside of the continent in the form of remittances so the question arises if we know that climate change is actually a serious concern how do we act proactively and engage this issue in the future and what role can the diaspora play in this proactive engagement to support not only immediate family but take a more holistic economy-wide approach to tackling with climate change so largely when we talk about climate change as a foundation we are more interested not only as climate change in terms of shifts in weather pattern and vulnerabilities but we're also very interested in the relationship between climate change and economic transformation and development as we know that large segments of the African economies are highly commodity dependent particularly oil and gas countries just to illustrate the the challenge for oil and gas countries during the COVID pandemic period with reduction in consumption and demand for oil and gas these countries for example if you look at Nigeria, Algeria and Gola all the oil and gas exporting countries are highly dependent revenue from the export of these commodities if there's a sudden decline due to an external shock in this case the pandemic in future it could be other things like climate change itself these countries face huge economic crisis and a debt burden if you consider for example countries in East Africa which do not have vast oil and gas resources you'll find that the economy is a lot more diversified and during the post-COVID period or have the ability to actually deal with the pandemic crisis their economic diversity has actually helped them to deal with the crisis much better than highly dependent oil and gas countries or commodity dependent economies so we are as a foundation we are really interested in not only looking at climate as a risk whether it's a short term external shock that is enacted on the system or slow moving crisis that is long run in nature that opposes systemic risk to economies we then filter down at the national and household level but we are also interested in opportunities that integrating climate and development issues in economic transformation and diversification that comes through new kinds of investment in energy in the climate proofing the agricultural sector or expanding the domain of urban transitions to incorporate this shift towards cleaner energy transitions and we believe that those investments the combination of managing long-term risk and short-term shocks worth long-term flagship initiatives and key infrastructure that enable the African continent to move in a direction towards more decarbonized and diversified economies is really where we would like to see the vision being set and we believe that the vision is critical to create the mechanisms and enabling conditions by which players on the continent can work with African diaspora in trying to build a bridge around these flagship initiatives. Flagship initiatives are a way of concentrating a multiple number of expertise and competencies and I would say there are two areas that where the diaspora can play a big role. The first is around the energy sector as you know that close to 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa don't have access to decent and affordable energy and there is a need for us to figure out how to innovatively finance this and scale access to cleaner energy particularly renewables and the second area are very important is the agricultural sector which is not only important for food security but also exports is to make investments in climate-proof types of agricultural activity throughout the value chain of the agricultural sector. So flagship initiatives are one way in which we can create a stimulating and innovative way of driving technological innovation financial bringing different kinds of financial capital to lower the cost of capital particularly for energy projects and to bring other types of competencies both from local and domestic actors sorry diasporic actors. It's fundamental that governments and at level of the region begin to think about these large-scale flagship initiatives and draw on the skills and the competencies of the diasporic community around the world. I would like to leave it at that I think that the climate issues are very pertinent from the points that I've just raised in terms of short-term long-term risks and new investment opportunities to transform African economies and this idea of actually capitalizing on innovative ways of crowding in remittances to support some of these solutions as we've heard from Leon Isaacs and others could be one of the innovations that could be linked to this bridge building between Africa and the diaspora thank you very much. So much thank you so much Salim Spakir for this intervention and I would like to present our last intervener for today's session before the Q and A session. So it's a pleasure to introduce Ambassador Paul Raymond Cortes who is Consul-General of the Philippines to Dubai and the Northern Emirates. Thank you so much for your contribution also and you speak very eloquently about the duty of diplomatic staff to voice the concerns of diaspora communities and the important role of social media as a mean of understanding this. So what should governments do to ensure that diplomatic missions have the tools and resources needed for this? Thank you so much for your contribution also. Thank you very much Larissa. First and foremost I've been trying to turn on my video but I couldn't anyhow if we were to be true about the public policy wait okay start my video here we go there can you see me now yes thank you very much Larissa once again now the heart and soul of the and the premise of my argumentation is that foreign policy is simply an extension of domestic policy and when we speak of domestic policy we feel that it has to mirror and echo exactly what our people back home hope for and envision what their society should be and as such if we were to be true to making sure that the foreign policy or our way we look at our migration and development nexus would be in terms of domestic policy then we have to make sure and ensure that the missions that we have we have abroad such as our embassies and consulates and its officers also echo exactly what is needed back home and to do so we need to make sure that we understand what our migrants and migration of our overseas Filipino community feels is necessary as far as their objectives for our countries are concerned and as such we have to know and find ways to listen to the various ways that we could understand what they feel our priorities for our development concerns and objectives this through social media obviously in the past it was very difficult to look at identifying and knowing and understanding each and every overseas Filipino in let's say the UAE where we have over 700,000 even 800,000 of them and finding out how they could play in development country and social media especially in the 21st century digital technology has given way for each of the Filipinos or Asians to voice out their concerns their objectives their hopes their visions of how they can contribute to an even more competitive Philippine economy social media but primarily through Facebook through TikTok through Twitter and through all the other avenues have given them a platform to voice out their concerns voice out what they think policy should be and how these policies policies should be formulated and implemented not only for their benefit not only for the benefit of the migrant community here but for the benefit of our country back home and this is exactly what it means to be attuned as far as the embassies and consulates are concerned with what the people want and need and hope because we are supposed to mirror what they think what they think our priorities and strategies to look at these get these objectives now at some point we also need to make sure that the diplomats we sent are uh likewise very um welcoming of this development if before we are able to look and come up with policies from an ivory tower from an academic perspective even far away or detached from our migrant communities the 21st century through social media has made the diplomat uh no has given the diplomat no choice but to listen and ensure that they're attuned to whatever it is that they think should be our strategies and this is what I hope the uh the next generation of diplomats should be able to understand uh from the recruitment process from the testing process from the training process our diplomats now should be able to be uh social media savvy to be able to reach out effectively and efficiently to their communities and find out what they think is necessary for them to play an even more contributory role to that of our uh national development and this is what I hope the heart and soul of a 21st century uh digital diplomacy and migration nexus should be one that is able to shift and go through the the tides and make sure that we are in tune with an in sync with our Filipino community and the migrant community abroad based on what they think our strategies and objectives for the country. Thank you so much again for your bright contribution and uh I will take this opportunity to thank all the speakers and I know where we are running out of time and I saw that um some questions have already been addressed so I just leave the floor to Roberto for the last part of this great event and thank you again. Thank you Larissa so we do have quite a number of questions in the chat and some have been answered and we are going to ask uh participants to bear with us a little bit over time because we think this is a very important part of this event um so the first question we have is uh from Susan Bregner a doctoral researcher and she asked how can regional and inter-regional cooperation within diaspora policies look like specifically um and I'll open this question up to any of the panelists that would like to respond please feel free to unmute your mic and respond to that question. Roberto if nobody else was saying anything I'll just make a quick comment in that um I think we have tended to work in this area as countries in silos traditionally and done our own thing and and that's why I think you know what you guys are doing is great because it's a non-competitive industry in other words we should share everything and so you know I think there's such similarities in the issues the challenges um we we've written a paper Martin and I about 25 reasons why diaspora initiatives fail which people often learn more from that than they do from success but but but one of the challenges we have is to have more interactivity have more conferences of more sort of sharing of of issues and and essentially I mean I'm a founder member of a group called Case which stands for copy and steal everything figure out you know who's doing something really well and see can you adapt it I mean Picasso said good artists copy great artists steal so I'm not a big fan of just figuring out what we can learn from each other I have one one thing that I would add to that which is that what we've found over the last couple of years is that diaspora experts will join our platform to give back to their specific country but they're ecstatic if they can help students in other countries as well and the reason that that's relevant we launched first in the Middle East and North Africa is that by having experts from Lebanon or Jordan or Palestine or Egypt you actually benefit the the students of the region more broadly but in addition employers hire global employers hire regionally and one of the things that we found in the research before launching localized is that when countries just go country by country and create their own initiative in silos unless it's a huge country like India where scale is already available everybody loses because employers don't hire by specific country if they're entering a region they're entering it regionally and so I would just strongly encourage if you're working with your government around diaspora policies how can you take a more regional approach or a linguistic approach you know within a region because if your goal is to increase investment expertise and jobs you don't want to create barriers for entry for employers excellent points thanks Kenzie can thank you Ronit any other speakers like to comment before we move on to the next question from my end I would just maybe add that there are some some discussions within the African Union to have some continental level initiatives for example investment funds that they can be targeted to the diaspora but they would benefit any country in the in the continent so there are some some thoughts going on in Africa regarding this in South America we're hoping to to move forward in this direction but we don't really have any any concrete examples to share I can give you an example of what was done in the past years ago when Ecuador used to have work of the main destinations of Ecuadorians abroad it engaged in collaboration with local authorities in those destinations to provide training for the migrants workshops in which they could enhance their capacities organizational capacities and other types of learning including how to lead projects and that facilitated for them to develop activities in those destinations and that was quite successful it was also framed in the in something that has been mentioned here how to empower those diasporas so it was a short-life project but it worked very well and it was well received by the migrants themselves that's an example of cooperation that require home and host countries to to do that to be successful excellent example thank you Dr. Margaritis for for sharing that I'll go on to the next question now which is from Kevin Brown who's with the global Jamaica diaspora council I know some parts of this have already been answered in the chat but I'll go ahead and share for the other panelists in case they would like to to respond as well he says that he agrees that governments tend to focus on remittances in financial investments and often communicate with limited groups of diaspora associations and leaders do you think online platforms are a solution for wider engagement then he asks about whether both right programs can help reconnect youth diaspora I think that part was mostly answered already so maybe we focus on the first part do you think online platforms are a solution for wider engagement would like to respond Robert hi sorry go ahead go ahead no you go ahead ladies first no thank you yeah so definitely I think online platforms is one way to kind of reach out and to kind of make it easy but it's not just about just having online presence but also what kind of language you use that is accessible so especially kind of generation is second and subsequent generation might not speak the language of origin countries birthright kind of programs really kind of help that kind of connections for sure so I think there needs to be that kind of encouragement step earlier on look at youth look at what the specific needs and this needs to be evidence based so don't it shouldn't be just across the board the same way you have to look because if you have conflict or affected regions will have different responses whilst you know that's from different origin countries will will have different needs and such and also depend on the federal countries but definitely I think online has opened up a lot more opportunity for communications and connections thank you thank you Bashir Paul yes thank you very much in addition to what Bashir had said there's there's so much more than remittances than the that the overseas communities can give back to their countries and to their people I've always believed let's say as far as the Filipino community in Dubai was concerned that there they could have a very contributed role in in the development of our arts our culture and our heritage I've always been partial to music particularly because of my interest to performing arts and as such I've tried as much as I could to rally the Filipino community to help out in in being a part of that process of growth as far as our arts are concerned and this was very important if there were no bridge between the migrant communities and back home through social media through online platforms and this was a way that we could have the Filipino community abroad join in that discussion as far as development is concerned as far as the arts are concerned or history or even heritage is concerned and this has given them a greater role and possibly even made people realize that there is also a role that they play as far as the development of the arts are concerned not just confined in the home country and that thank you to online platforms as I said TikTok YouTube Facebook and so forth and so on there are ways that now that the migrant community can side by side play with their counterparts back home as far as many issues are concerned. Thank you very much. Kingsley did you have a comment as well please? Just a quick comment I mean I agree with all of that I mean technology is fantastic it's been the game changer I mean it's opening up all sorts of fantastic opportunities because of just the geographical distance etc but I think it's not an either or situation and we have to do both and you know the genius of technology is that we're no longer geographically restricted we can connect with anybody anywhere in the world and for free and my business free is a very compelling price point kind of works and I think that's that's extraordinary and wonderful fantastic that said I've always found that the you know we always tried to be high tech and high touch in other words you know at the end of the day if you really want to convert people it is incredibly powerful when you get them together and actually what's happened under COVID and it's kind of got a diaspora dimension to this but just in general terms what's happened under COVID is that our networks have shrunk and networks usually churn you know you swap all of the humans etc but what's happened is we've all hunkered down and we spent time with family and friends and a few business connections and we have lost touch with that outer ring of connections that we always had and that's where opportunity lies because it opportunity does not lie with people that you know extremely well that lies out there so there's a job of work to be done to get back out which is which technology can help us with but at the end of the day it's about building we are social animals and we crave social connectivity and I think that's that's all we shouldn't forget thank you very much Kingsley I also take this opportunity to plug our online platform by diaspora which was built specifically to to facilitate this kind of exchange of different kinds of contributions among different diaspora communities and maybe they're so you can share the link in the chat so I move on to the next question who's also from Kevin Brown and this I think was in response to Ronit and he says will government change policy slash culture to facilitate your recommendations on diaspora human capital I think it might have been responded in the chat but in case there's something like the ad run it would just say that it's such an emerging focus you know that you have ministries that are now adding ministry of foreign affairs and diaspora for the first time so everything is new I think that people are very curious about best best practices so I am optimistic you know if there were six traditional ways in the past that diaspora communities could contribute I think now there's a seventh way which has to do with this idea of knowledge remittances and engaging in all seven of those ways you know from traditional remittances to tourism and volunteerism to you know direct investment to political advocacy etc those were all the traditional ways I think what I'm arguing is just expand and add that seventh dimension which is for those that are not going to move back which is the majority how do you harness what they have and generally what they have is social capital which was discussed earlier and knowledge and expertise and that's a scalable way to transfer it so I'm optimistic not everyone will do it but but we are seeing these conversations taking place right now thank you Ronan and I think the last question I see in the chat and I should mention there's a lot of great exchanges and comments in the chat I'm not going to read through them all but invite everybody to have a look the last question that I see is from Dr. Fernanda Mora and she asked I should like to ask what evaluation is made of experiences of co-development in particular between territorial collectives of the countries of origin and the host countries as for example between the city of I'm going to put this pronunciation I apologize Montreux in France and Mali and he would like to take that question Kingsley I would like not to take that question but I think it was Mali you know I don't know that particular that take Montreux and Mali although I do know that twinning was a big thing in the when I was going up twinning was a big thing between towns and different countries etc and you know there might be time to dust off that approach a little bit back to that place thing you know you look at the hometown associations and Manuel might know more about this than me between Mexico and the Mexican hometown association seems about 500 of them throughout the United States who who raise money and support things back in their hometown in Mexico and then there was the Tres Peruno scheme where the government and the state added an extra buck to everybody's buck and so there's a three for one sort of thing so yeah I'm sure there's a lot of work needs to be done in that space to find out potential and what's happened I really appreciate your response inspired of not wanting to answer I think that was that was very useful so I think that we'll wrap up the question and answers I don't see anything else in the chat and with that I like to pass the word on to Karim for closing remarks and thank you all once again for the very active participation in all the rich discussions thank you very much Roberto and well what I have to say is of course to thank all the panelists the attendees and of course the interpreters for such an insightful event to us the discussion cannot stop here well should not stop here so please keep sharing your views on the future of diaspora engagement with us we have put our contact details in the chat and we will be more than happy to take forward the conversation on the future of diaspora engagement jointly with you so don't hesitate to reach out to us and we would like to thank you again for your availability and for your attention thank you very much and see you soon