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	Migration and Remittances by News agencies   Remittances sent home by migrant workers are the single biggest income source for developing nations. The total amount sent home by foreign workers exceeds the amount that the whole world spends on foreign aid.   International migration, the movement of people across international boundaries, has enormous implications for growth and welfare in both origin and destination countries.   Nearly 200 million people live outside their country of birth. There are strong pressures for international migration which are driven by differences in demographic profiles and real incomes between countries. The major issues are how to minimize disruptive effects of large-scale international migration and enhance its development impact.   Research suggests the economic gains for both receiving developed and sending developing countries are significant even for relatively small increases in the workforces of OECD countries, and that relative gains are much higher for developing-country households than rich-country households.   Massive migration of highly-skilled citizens - the so-called "brain drain" - poses troubling dilemmas for many smaller low-income countries. For example, 8 out of 10 Haitian- or Jamaican-born college graduates live abroad.   Recorded remittance flows to developing countries are estimated at US$240 billion in 2007. The true size, including unrecorded flows through formal and informal channels, is believed to be significantly larger.   Remittance flows are more than twice as large as total development aid and represent the largest source of foreign exchange for numerous countries.   Governments should treat remittances like any other source of private income. As remittances are private transactions they should not be thought of as a substitute for debt or aid flows.   Reducing the cost of remittance transfers produces significant benefits to the migrants families. In addition to raising consumption levels, the steady stream of foreign currency improves a country"s creditworthiness for external borrowing.   Bank efforts to improve migration data include the most comprehensive database on skilled migration to date, based on census and survey data from OECD countries and—in collaboration with the UN Population Division—a bilateral matrix of global migration flows including South-South migration and various extensions along gender and age of migration dimensions.   Migration has attracted increased interest among policymakers, both due to the recent growth in remittance flows as well as to migration-related concerns in both developed and developing countries   Insights that have emerged on migration and remittances include:   Income differentials, as well as political and demographic forces, have the strongest effect on migration patterns. When permitted, migration is a major economic equilibrating mechanism.   International migration boosts world incomes. By allowing workers to move to where they are more productive, migration results in an increase in aggregate output and income.   Remittance rates tend to vary with the transaction costs as well as with the extent of need, that is, the income gap between family members in the host and home countries.   Remittances generally reduce the level and severity of poverty.   Remittances frequently lead to higher human capital accumulation, investment, and entrepreneurship.   Migration affects household health decisions over and above the effect through remittances.   The brain drain exhibits significant regional differences and dynamics, with more serious implications for economically isolated smaller low-income countries.
	Development not a privilege but a right for all by United Nations News Service   Jan 2008   Addressing the largest bloc of developing countries at the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed that development should not be “a privilege of the few, but a right for all.”   “That right has been made clear over the past two decades, as the world agreed on a set of achievable, development goals,” Mr. Ban told the Group of 77 developing countries and China – commonly known as the “G77” – at a ceremony at which the group’s chairmanship was handed over from Pakistan to Antigua and Barbuda.   Mr. Ban added that these objectives have been captured in the UN Development Agenda, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the pledges made by world leaders to slash poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy by 2015.   He noted that economic growth in recent years has put a number of developing countries in a better position to achieve the MDGs by the target date of 2015. “But it is clear that growth alone is far from sufficient to meet the Goals,” the Secretary-General stressed, adding that “much more needs to be done in the next seven years if we are to win our race to the Goals on time.”   While extreme poverty is declining at the global level, millions of people are still trapped in structural poverty and go hungry every day, he said. In addition, the number of people living on less than $1 a day in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa continues to rise.   Mr. Ban called for moving from “rhetoric to reality” to expand the level of international commitment to reduce poverty and eliminate social exclusion. “Countries must work hard to ensure that their most vulnerable citizens attain a stronger voice and better quality of life.”   At the global level, the international system must become more responsive to the needs of developing countries, particularly in the areas of trade, finance, technology transfer and migration, he noted.
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