The Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) is a recent  initiative of the international community to address the migration and development interconnections in practical and action-oriented ways.  It marks the culmination of more than a decade of international discussion on the growing importance of these linkages, and the progressive acknowledgement of the need to address the policy implications and responses in a multilateral framework.
Conceived as an informal, multilateral and State-led process, the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) is intended to add value to the current debate on international migration and development by fostering international cooperation, enhancing inter-State dialogue and discuss and promote new policy ideas in the field of migration and its interrelation with development.
Through a well-prepared, participative and sustained dialogue between developing and developed countries the Forum seeks to arrive at common and evidence-based understandings on those areas where migration policies have the greatest potential to contribute to development, and where development policies take greater account of migration and its potential benefits for development. The Forum is also intended to make explicit the growing recognition that international migration is a normal and crucial element in the development process.

Among the formative initiatives pre-dating the GFMD are:

a) the UN Population and Development Conference in Cairo in 1994, whose Programme of Action ranges across issues such as remittances, temporary migration, transfer of knowledge, skills and technology, etc, and calls for "orderly international migration [that] can have positive impacts on both the communities of origin and the communities of destination", and

b) the more recent Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM), established under the auspices of the UN in 2003.

The GFMD was proposed by the UN Secretary-General and his Special Representative on International Migration and Development at the High Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development (HLD) on 14-15 September 2006 within the framework of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Over 140 Member States discussed the global implications of international migration and the mutually beneficial interaction between migration and development. The High Level Dialogue made explicit the close relationship of development policies with migration policies, and reaffirmed how good migration governance can contribute to development and how development policies can impact on migration. This complex relationship is of growing importance as migration increases every year.

Belgium volunteered to initiate the process and to prepare and organize its first meeting in consultation with the Special Representative of the SG of the UN. The inaugural meeting was held in Brussels on 9-11 July 2007 under the chairmanship of the Government of Belgium. 
The 2nd Global Forum on Migration and Development was held in Manila, Philippines on 27-30 October 2008.
The 3rd Global Forum on Migration and Development will be held in Athens, Greece on 2-5 November 2009.