UNITED NATIONS, Sept 15: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday welcomed Belgium’s offer to host the first meeting next year of his proposed Global Forum on Migration and Development — a standing body in which countries will be able to discuss and exchange ideas.

The Forum will be tasked with building relationships of trust, and to bring together the best ideas that different countries have developed: facilitating remittances, engaging diasporas, exploring new ways to reduce poverty, building educational partnerships and other cooperative ventures.

He stressed that the planned forum would not be some norm-setting inter-governmental commission on migration but would be led and overseen by states.

“It would be informal, voluntary, consultative. Above all, it would not make binding decisions,” Mr Annan told the two-day meeting.