 I would like to now welcome to the floor Dr. Mary McCullough, who is going to the head of the Migration Research Division and editor of the World Migration Report for her presentation on the launch of the IOM 2020 World Migration Report in Aramaic. Dr. Mary, you have the floor. Thank you so much, Christina. And thanks also to Carmella and for the opportunity to really just have a bit of a taster for of the World Migration Report 2020. We are delighted to be able to launch the Arabic version of the World Migration Report, a very important region, of course, in terms of migration, but also in regards to displacement. And so I will be very quickly going through some of the key aspects related to the World Migration Report, some of the key kind of findings and big picture issues. And then also talking a little bit about how we actually produced the report before then going into some of the aspects in regards to COVID-19, because this is really why we're here today to get the update on COVID-19 for partners. We can go to the next slide, Carmella. Thank you very much. I've done that already. What I'd like to do really is situate the World Migration Report, IOM's flagship publication in the context of our vision. I've highlighted there for you in bold that we are about advancing evidence-based understandings of migration issues globally. Of course, we have a very strong focus on supporting migrants as well as member states in regards to some of the operational challenges and encouraging the social and economic development of the world and different parts of the world through migration. But this is our contribution as our flagship, which has been going for 20 years now in terms of advancing the evidence base on migration globally. I've drawn out here just a couple of sentences from the forward of the report, and this is from our Director General Antonio Vittorino, who has highlighted, I won't read it out to you, but highlighted the importance of objective and balanced depictions and analysis of migration globally. Unfortunately, as we have seen in the context of COVID-19, misinformation and even disinformation has reached heightened proportions in regards to the pandemic, and it is a real challenge. What we're trying to do with the World Migration Report is to reassure readers that we are undertaking rigorous and robust and balanced accounts. Thank you very much, Camilla. I can see there is the table of content. So we have revised the World Migration Report series so that Part 1, which is repeated from edition to edition, the next edition coming out at the end of 2021, the end of next year, we always provide a global overview of migration and migrants, as well as a regional chapter on migration and migrants. These are very heavy in terms of data and statistics, and then we take a deep dive into some of the complex and emerging migration issues of the day. And this is particularly to support civil society organizations that we work with, member states, policy makers in particular, but those who are delivering programs, the media, to be able to look at some specific challenges and complex issues in more detail. That's the one for the World Migration Report 2020, the current edition. And then we'll talk a little bit about some of the thematic chapters that will be in the next report in a moment. I've put in this particular slide because it has garnered quite a lot of interest. We really put this sort of little table in the first chapter, the overview chapter of the report, to show just how much migration has changed globally in the last 20 years since the publication of the First World Migration Report in the year 2000. We can see that some things haven't really changed that much, such as the estimated proportion of international migrants has gone from 2.8 to 3.5% of the world's population. And we can see actually that the sex disaggregation hasn't really changed all that much over time, only going up by 0.4%, but some things have changed very dramatically. We see the numbers have gone up, of course, in terms of international migrants, but of course the global population has also increased, so proportionately it's not that much different. But if we take a look down the table, we can see that global international remittances, for example, has really massively increased. And we know now at the moment, international remittances far outstrips official development assistance. And more recently, it has overtaken our foreign direct investment. And so we are focusing in the context of COVID-19 on remittance patterns in particular, because we know that that's going to be particularly important for recovery after the pandemic. If we look further down, we can also see that refugees and internally displaced persons, IDPs has grown very substantially in terms of number. And unrelatedly, but I'm sure that there are some connections. We've seen the number of member states increased very dramatically in the last 20 years and also the number of IOM field officers. The global overview provides a really a very big picture of you looking at international migrants, as well as international migration to being related, but quite different in some ways. We look at specific migrant groups, which are highlighted. And then we also look at IOM programmatic and operational data, which we know is not global necessarily in nature, but it does provide some very unique insights into migration practice globally. Now what we do do for both chapters to which is the global overview and the regional chapter, these are some of the charts from the regional chapter is we use data, the latest migration data to show patterns and to show differences across regions. What we can see on the left hand side is Africa and that is migrants to Africa. The middle one, which is green, the big bar there is migrants within Africa. So those people who are moving within the continents to other countries. And then we can also see migrants from Africa. Now that's a 30 year kind of overview condensed into those three kind of graphs there. On the left is Africa on the right is Latin America and the Caribbean. Now I've put those two up just to show just how distinct those migration migration patterns are over time we can see a very substantial difference in regards to both migrants to Latin America and the Caribbean and within Latin America and the Caribbean compared to from we could say for example that migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean. Really are immigrants. It's a big origin region for migration. Most of those of course as you can see there are actually traveling to northern America. In terms of international migration, whereas for Africa, we can see actually that most migrants stay within the continent. And there is a very substantial spike in increase in relation to migration within Africa, which is international migration within Africa. We're not talking about internal. And we can also see that over time there has been a substantial increase in terms of migration from Africa to other regions around the world, most notably of course to Europe. Thanks. What we're able to do with these types of outputs is get very, very quick, clear pictures in terms of differences that we're seeing at the regional level. We supplement that with discussions at the sub regional level, of course, and talk about the particularities using the latest data and the latest research and analysis. But here again we can see those comparisons between Europe and this is about population proportional population change over a decade. We can see that some countries within Europe have experienced population decline. Whereas we look at Latin America and the Caribbean on the right hand side, we can see that there has been substantial growth in terms of the top 20 countries with the largest proportional population change. We also use data to show complexity. This graph and this output actually did take us a little while to design because what we actually have pulled together here are statistics on refugees and asylum seekers, which show how complex the situations can be within different parts of the world. Here I've included Africa, the UN region of Africa, so the entire continent. And what we can see here is that for some countries they are the origin countries of refugees, but they are also hosting substantial populations of refugees, many of which of course as we know are protracted. So if we flick through the report and we look at the six UN regions, we can see substantial differences in these patterns over time. We've also highlighted in the report and in some of the kind of like subsidiary outputs, even for the most hardened migration nerds who have been working on the topic all around the world and in different different geographies. There are some unusual kind of aspects that people are often surprised about. So I've highlighted a few of these in this particular slide. Most people don't know, for example, that France is the top sixth top receiving country of international differences in the world and Germany is the ninth. Most people who are fairly new to migration and displacement dynamics may not know, for example, that the Syrian Arab Republic, who is now the largest origin country of refugees in the world, just around about a decade ago, was actually the third largest host country of refugees in the world, hosting more than a million refugees, mainly from Iraq. You may or may not know that Canada is now the top refugee resettlement country in the world with over 28,000 resettlements in 2018. Just highlighting very quickly our lead thematic chapter, which actually has turned out to be rather timely for all the wrong unfortunate reasons around COVID-19 in regards to migrants contributions. We have seen this, you know, in very stark terms during the pandemic that migrants can contribute in a whole range of different aspects to the functioning of our societies and COVID-19 has really stripped this bear. In this particular chapter, what we actually highlight is that migrants, they contribute to our societies through sociocultural, civic, political and economic aspects. They keep our societies running in many respects, but at the same time we are experiencing very significant increases in disinformation and misinformation. That's not only about neglecting migrants contributions, it's actively undermining migrants contributions. So this is a particularly important chapter. We will be extending this analysis in the next World Migration Report and looking specifically at the disinformation and misinformation aspects and the use of technology, because we know that this is a growing concern. It's not only in relation to migration and migrants, and as I mentioned earlier, we are certainly seeing that in regards to COVID-19 and public health issues globally, for example. The other thematic chapters in the report I've just highlighted there, I would encourage you to go, if you are working, for example, on climate change, for example, and migration and displacement, have a look at the human mobility and adaptation to environmental change. We will again be running another chapter in the next World Migration Report on the topic. One that is highly relevant, of course, is children and unsafe migration. This has been used by researchers, by policymakers around the world in terms of informing different responses to this very, very significant topic that has emerged over the last sort of decade or so in particular. Very quickly, this is really about reassuring you as readers and users of the report about its integrity and its quality. We work with co-authors, we work with academic reviewers, but very importantly too, we work with our IOM colleagues who are themselves experts from around the world in terms of co-authoring, in terms of contributing research and analysis and insights. And they also peer review the World Migration Report to ensure that it is up to date, that it's relevant, that it's robust and accurate. We're getting towards the end now. Thank you very much for your patience. I'm just highlighting here. We're very, very pleased to be able to launch the Arabic version full translation of the World Migration Report. We currently have Spanish, Chinese, French, and of course the initial one is produced in English. Russian is still underway, the final UN language, and then we do have some outputs available already in Portuguese and we're working on German, Swahili. We would love to get to Urdu and other languages of course, but it is usually related to funding. I would really like to acknowledge the support of both the IOM, MIRAC committee and also the regional office in Cairo for their support in funding the translation of the Arabic version. Now, I'm not going to read this one out. We're doing a huge amount of work on COVID-19 in migration and mobility, of course, because we are finding that it is, you know, the great comes to migration, these mobility restrictions. We're doing work with a range of different partners from all around the world, including a series of webinars and papers, looking at the big picture on transformations. We're also looking at producing a chapter, looking really at the first 12 months of the pandemic for the next World Migration Report. We're working on that feverishly now and we'll be able to deliver that at the next IOM Council towards the end of next year. And finally, a nice segue into the discussion on COVID-19 and responses within the region. I've just highlighted here some of the outputs that we have been working on, the analytical snapshots. Very important, both for IOM staff, for our stakeholders, member states have been using these quite extensively. We are up to now 56 analytical snapshots and many of which are translated into Arabic. Of course, we have the high level advisors, think pieces. These are the really big picture issues in terms of what's happening to mobility systems. For example, what about migrants rights in the context of COVID-19? And we've also done some extensive work on gender and the impacts on women migrant workers, for example, around the world and a series of migration series papers on different thematic and geographic topics. I will thank you again, once again, especially to the regional office in Cairo and to Carmella and her fantastic support, certainly available for any questions later on in the discussion. I look forward to listening in on the COVID-19 response in the region too. Thank you.