 Thank you very much, Mr Swing. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished delegates. Welcome to the Migrants Voices panel where we reflect on issues pertaining to international migration today. Allow me first to express my heartfelt thanks to the international organization for migration and Mr Swing for inviting me to moderate this panel. It's a great honour and I'm deeply humbled to be speaking such distinguished guests, and before men and women with such rich and insightful life experiences. Now there are millions of us whose families, whose lives exist across borders. People migrate for many different reasons. They could be economic, social, political. They could be because of the environment, environmental reasons as well. We move because of social or political upheaval in our countries of origin because we want a better life. We move because of a better business opportunity or to enhance our career opportunities. So there are many underlying factors that have led to the increasing mobility that we've seen around the world in the last few decades. The force of migration is extremely powerful. Migration has shaped our world and it will define our future. It's sparked innovation. It's spread ideas. It's relieved poverty and laid the foundations for the global economy. But I think it's very important to stress that migration is first and foremost about the people. It's about us. It's about the transformations that we go through in the process of physical displacement. Migration basically transforms not just the individuals who move but the societies that they move into and also the societies that they leave behind. It's about how we integrate and interact with the societies in which we live, how we gain in wellbeing and Mr Swing touched on this. One fundamental question that I hope we can address and answer today is does migration change our lives for the better? It's a very important question and it's a very important conversation to have today at a time when we're seeing shifting destinations in migration trends. At a time when there's a growing debate on how the benefits of migration can best be harnessed for development. So this is a moment of direct interaction of a conversation of an exchange between you and the panelists here, all of us who have migration ancestry. This is the opportunity also for us to tell organisations such as the IOM, the International Organization for Migration, how they can contribute, how they can do better to make the lives of migrants better, how they can contribute to the wellbeing of migrants. So allow me to introduce the rest of the panelists before I talk a bit more about my personal experience as a migrant. To my right we have Mr Alfredo Zamudio who is the Director of the International, internal rather, Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva. He was born in Chile in 1960 where he lived with his father until the military coup in 1973 but moved to Norway just a few years later. He's lived in Norway, the United States, has worked in Darfur, Timor and Colombia and he has first-hand experience on issues pertaining to internal displacement. But he has also very interesting stories to tell us about Norway which we're very much looking forward to hear. To my left is Ms Yolanda Suda who's written extensively on migration issues and particularly she's currently researching the issue of gender and migration which I think it's very important to discuss which should be at the centre of discussions on migration and migration policy today. Ms Suda is the eighth out of nine children who was born in the Philippines and has lived in Tokyo, the Philippines of course but is now back teaching in the United States in Boston. She's worked a lot with migrants as well and we look very much forward to hearing about that experience. We also have Mr Gibril Fahl who's the director of GK Partners and the chairman of Afford. Afford I understand works to expand and enhance the role that diaspora plays in Africa's development. Mr Fahl is also the founder of Remit 8 which is a programme to transform remittances into a sustainable form of international development finance using tax reliefs and other microeconomic policies. Mr Fahl is originally from the Gambia but has lived and worked in London for over 25 years. Thank you all very much. I am fully Batibow journalist with Al Jazeera International based in Doha Qatar. I have been a political and economic exilé, I've been an international student, I've been an undocumented worker, I've been an immigrated spouse and expat journalist. I am black, as you can see, I am African, I am a woman, I am Muslim, separated from my family of origin and between myself and my four sisters there are spouses, our parents and our children. There are 17 of us who were born in seven countries, speak five languages and live on three different continents. Today I am a member of the so-called global elite, I'm considered one of the success stories, but getting here wasn't easy. It was a tough journey. All of my experiences have helped me understand that despite its complexities there are two fundamental things about international migration today. Being an international migrant gives us an intimate and personal understanding of what international truly means. It not only means that you uproot yourself from your country of origin, but it also makes you aware of the other people, of the other international people that do it as well. It makes you understand the scale, the complexity, the vibrancy that is the migration phenomenon. My family was led to leave my home country of Guinea for a combination of factors, like is the case for millions of people around the world. Guinea Conakry in the 1980s was an extremely tough place politically, but also economically. In 1981, my father, who was in politics at the time, was arrested, accused with a group of others of plotting to overthrow the regime of the then president, the first president of Guinea after independence from France, who was Ahmed's secretary. My father was sent to the infamous Cambuaro prison where he was tortured, but unlike many others of his generation, he was fortunate enough to be eventually freed. When it came to education, Guinea also lagged behind many other African countries who had gained their independence at the same time in the late 50s and 60s. Until the mid-1980s, national languages and not French, which was the official language, was taught in schools. National languages were the primary language of education. My parents wanted a better life for us, a life free of persecution because of our ethnic origin, but most importantly they wanted us to have a good, solid education. The remoto was a good education is the key to a successful life and it continues to be, and this is what I'm trying to teach my children today. Because of these factors, in 1987 we moved to Nairobi, Kenya, to a country where we had no ties, where we didn't speak the language. We were Africans who were still in Africa, but we felt out of place. Integrating wasn't easy. I know there's always been a lot of focus on African migration to the West, but migration within Africa is an enduring phenomenon and will continue to be. And we're not talking about refugees here per se because that's a whole different phenomenon. It's an entirely separate issue, but about voluntary migration by Africans to other African communities, which is often overlooked when we discuss migration. Migration of this type is prompted by, of course, the search for a better life, established employment prospects, as was the case for my family when we moved. My father had a job in Nairobi when we moved. But very often, even though you're an African still on the African continent, you still face the same problems of integration as in the West. Discrimination against migrants was and is still a reality in most African countries because the locals feel threatened by the prosperity of the newly arrived, who usually have one major aim of success in whatever endeavour they engage, in which spurs them on. So in Kenya there were many people in our situation and this is where when I say migration teaches us about the other people who do it as well. There were many people in our situation. I went to school with Ethiopians who had fled the murderous regime of Mengistuhaile Mariam with Ugandans who had lived under the rule of Idi Amin and who wanted a better life in Kenya. And you know they were seeking business opportunities, basically a better life. So people from different parts of Africa were there for the same reasons as we were. So this gave me an insight on how other migrants from other countries lived and to a certain extent makes you accept your own situation. I had the experience of both being and getting to know families who had left dangerous situations back home, social and political upheaval in search of peace and security. And these identities, by the way, they're additive. You know you don't become a Kenyan instead of a Guinean, you become Guinean, you remain Guinean and to a certain extent Kenyan, all the while being international at the same time. Now the second thing my migration experience has taught me is that being a migrant is hard work. It takes resilience. It takes creativity to make a life for yourself. You have to figure out new ways of staying in touch with people that requires you to bounce back from the day-to-day discrimination and hostilities and the terrible treatment that migrants are subjected to in every country, whether in Africa, but perhaps more particularly, especially in developed countries. So, as Mr Swing mentioned, I moved to Washington DC in 1996. I was lucky enough to have a family that had the resources to send me to study in the United States. But they could only afford to pay for our tuition, so I had to find a way to support myself through college and graduate school. I was on an F1 student visa in the US, which meant I wasn't allowed to work, but very soon, because you have to support yourself, you become one of the millions of illegal workers in America. You go to school in the morning and you go to work in the afternoon. So, I found ways to work around the restrictive immigrant policies in order to support myself and improve my life chances. This is a case for millions of Africans living in the United States who are not allowed to work but who do it. I mean, everyone knows it happens, but we're still labelled illegal workers because we're doing it illegally. And I did succeed in the US. I eventually got one of those high skilled workers visas, the H1B visa, which allowed me to work with peace of mind without having to worry whether or not someone was going to knock on my door and tell me that I was working illegally and deport me. I had the car. I had the job. I had the apartment. Basically, all the things that the Africans who make it to the United States aspire to. So, I was leaving the American dream, if you will, but I gave it all up in 2004 to move to France. I gave up the American dream to move to France. And everyone starting with my parents thought this was a very, very bad idea. So, I gave up the American dream to go to a country, France, where migrants face terrible hardship, isolation, segregation, racism. As a black woman working in the media, I would never get a job in France, I was told. Because do you see any black people on French television? You can count them. There are none, they told me. But it was my heart that took me to France. I married a French man. I spoke the language. I knew the culture. I knew the values of the republic. And yet, I didn't fit it. It was very hard. It was very difficult. I did experience racism in France and discrimination. For example, simple things like getting an apartment, which was relatively easy in Washington, because if you had a job, if you had the money, then you would have a place to live. In France, it wasn't, and still isn't the case for many people, because I'll give you an example. You'd call a landlord and say, yes, they hear your last name, Thibault. And they say, yes, of course. The apartment is available. You can come and visit it. And then you show up, they see a black woman, and their whole attitude changes. And they'll tell you the place is rented. So these are the sort of things that I encountered, difficulties. But you bounce back from these experiences. You work harder. And in many ways, my experience confronting the challenges, different challenges in the States and Kenya, gave me the drive to move forward in France. As a black woman working in the media today, I have to work twice as hard as anyone else. I know it's very difficult for people to comprehend this. But first of all, the media industry, the television industry, is a male-dominated industry. Even though you see a lot of female presenters behind the scenes, it's the men who run the show. It's a white male-dominated industry. So I've had to work very hard to be in the position that I'm in today. But I'm not going to dwell on that because I did have a successful experience overall. Now, there's no doubt that my migration experience has improved my well-being and that of my families. I am a success story. I'm not going to deny that. I'm never going to reject that. I'm considered today an elite international labour migrant working in Doha. I'm a member of a very cohesive and vibrant international community in Qatar. And I'm raising my two sons to have an international outlook. To understand that no matter where we are, our communities are still with us. I hold a French passport today, but Guinea is still in my heart. Guinea is where my heart is. That's where my family is. So when people ask me, it's always difficult. When people ask you where are you from, where is home? Home is where I live right now. It's where my children and my husband are, which is Doha. But home is also Guinea because that's where I was born and that's where my family is. Now, as a journalist, how I report the news is informed by my experience as an international migrant. When, for example, I reported recently on the Westgate attack in Nairobi, my personal experience in Kenya growing up in Nairobi helped me give context and insight to this breaking news story that I wouldn't have been able to give with any other story because I knew the people, I knew the places and I knew what they were going through. I've been one of them. So, in conclusion, I'll just say this. Migration gives people international perspective. Migration requires hard work, resilience, creativity. There are millions of us whose lives, whose families exist across borders. We know that international migration should be a force that strengthens peace, that knits nations together. When we exchange people, we gain community, we gain ideas, we gain new ways of understanding what unites us. But this understanding also carries the responsibility to protect the world's most vulnerable migrants, to put the issue of gender at the centre of migration policy and discussion, to ensure the safety and health of economic migrants as well as political refugees. So, I look to the IOM and other international entities to be a strong voice for migrants in the global arena, to draw on our creativity, on our resilience to work for peace, respect and international cooperation. And most importantly, what I look to the IOM and all these other international organisations is to remind our leaders that people, people are nations most valuable assets. Thank you very much. So, I will now...