Bogotá Joins Cities Supported by the Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees to Ensure An Inclusive Pandemic Recovery
Bogotá Joins Cities Supported by the Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees to Ensure An Inclusive Pandemic Recovery
Bogotá joins two other Colombian city grantees with a new project to improve the nutritional conditions of migrant and refugee children.
The launch of Bogotá’s project marks 20 cities supported by the Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees, bringing the initiative closer to its goal of funding 22 cities by 2022.
Bogotá, October 31, 2022 — Today, Bogotá joins Medellín, Barranquilla, and fourteen other global cities as a grantee of the Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees (GCF), a Mayors Migration Council initiative supported by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and other donors. Bogotá will use the funds to establish the city’s first center dedicated to improving the nutritional conditions of migrant and refugee infants and children, working with their caregivers to develop and deliver individualized care plans for the city’s youngest migrants and refugees.
Bogotá is home to 500,000 Venezuelans — more than any other Colombian city — 47 percent of them women and girls. “Our city is committed to guaranteeing the socio-economic inclusion of our most vulnerable new Bogotanos,” said Claudia López Hernández, Mayor of Bogotá. “With the support of the Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees, we are strengthening Bogotá’s commitment to defend the rights of all residents – especially our youngest and newest residents – to access critical public services.”
Bogotá’s Secretariat for Social Inclusion and Cafam will focus their work on the neighborhoods of Santa Fe and Los Mártires, both with a high concentration of migrant and refugee residents in extremely vulnerable conditions. According to the Mayors Migration Council’s own research, the barriers Venezuelan refugees in Colombian cities face to accessing public services has been compounded by Covid-19’s impact on local economies. While international responses have focused on short-term needs, the Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees supports city-led initiatives that promote long-term inclusion for displaced people.
Visit www.mayorsmigrationcouncil.org/gcf and follow #GlobalCitiesFund on social media for more information. For general background and inquiries, visit www.mayorsmigrationcouncil.org.
For press inquiries, contact Jake Adler, Head of Communications at the Mayors Migration Council, at jadler@mayorsmigrationcouncil.org.
Background:
About the Mayors Migration Council
The Mayors Migration Council (MMC) is a mayor-led coalition that accelerates ambitious global action on migration and displacement. With most of the world’s migrants and displaced people living in cities, our mission is to use the power of city diplomacy and practice to create a world where urban migrants, displaced people, and receiving communities can thrive.
To fulfill our vision, we help mayors and the cities they lead: i) influence policy decisions at the national and international level; ii) secure financial and technical resources to implement local solutions; iii) advance global action on emerging policy frontiers; iv) raise awareness among global audiences; v) generate and share knowledge grounded in local experiences; vi) build relationships with local and global champions.
Created by mayors for mayors, we are a nimble team of political advisors and urban practitioners led by a Leadership Board of global city leaders, including the mayors of Amman, Bristol, Dhaka North, Freetown, Kampala, Los Angeles, Milan, Montevideo, Montréal, and Zürich. We are managed as a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and operate with the institutional support of the Open Society Foundations, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the IKEA Foundation, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and the Robert Bosch Stiftung, in addition to other project-based donors.
To learn more, please visit our website or follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
About the Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees
The Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees (GCF) is the Mayors Migration Council’s (MMC) response to the unmet needs of cities as they support migrants, refugees, and internally displaced people (IDPs) in the face of pressing challenges, from global pandemics to the climate crisis.
By directly funding cities to implement inclusive programs of their own design, the GCF builds precedents of fiscal feasibility in city governments that are often disregarded by donors with low risk tolerance. The GCF is led by the MMC in partnership with five key Strategic Partners: the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40 Cities), UN Migration Agency (IOM), United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
Beginning in 2021 with a $1M seed investment to support five cities, in less than two years the GCF has become a $5M+ fund supported by four donors with a pipeline of 20 city grantees. These cities directly support thousands of migrants, refugees, and marginalized residents across two thematic chapters: Inclusive Climate Action and Inclusive Pandemic Response. With the support of our Strategic Partners and our key donors — the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the IKEA Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and the Robert Bosch Stiftung — the GCF is well on track to meet its goal to drive international funding to at least 22 cities by the end of 2022.
A Paris Peace Forum 2022 Scale Up Project and a Fast Company 2022 World Changing Idea, the GCF has created a marketplace of investment-ready, city-led solutions for migrants and refugees with the potential to shift humanitarian and development responses to those best placed to deliver them: cities.
To learn more, visit the GCF website.
