IV International Forum on Migration and Peace
20-21 June 2013 New York

Choosing Alternatives to Chaos:
Toward Better International Governance of Migration… and Peace
John K. Bingham,
Head of Policy, International Catholic Migration Commission
Coordinator of Civil Society activities in the UN High-level Dialogue
on International Migration and Development

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Introduction

Governance is complicated, and it is not.

Good governance is first about paying attention to human beings.

Good governance of migration pays attention to people who are vulnerable or hurt. Last week in Geneva, one of our NGO partners in Italy described how 8,000 people arriving on boats, half dead from hunger, thirst and war in Libya, made it clear that the need for greater governance in migration today is not theoretical. Governance must be practical.

Good governance of migration also pays attention to people achieving their human potential. Governance that is good provides bridges for human potential, including out of vulnerability. One of many indicators: migrant men and women sending home half a trillion dollars last year just in reported remittances. More than three times the level of overseas foreign assistance (government development aid), this is hard-earned, private money—most of it going to the families of migrant workers, in developing countries and for classic development outcomes: housing, education and healthcare. This too is not theoretical.

Finally, as migrants are part of their communities, good migration governance must further embrace whole societies: promoting social cohesion, appropriate public order and integration.

To be clear however, people aren’t the only thing moving in migration; so is migration governance.

Some of the movement in governance is forward: like the title of this panel: movement “toward” international governance. But like human migration, some of the movement in governance is also quite irregular, and even dangerous. Questions on governance then are the typical questions for migration: what is the situation now and in what directions is—or should it be—moving?

1. What is the situation of migration governance now, and why is movement needed?

Governance in any field—health, trade, finance, and migration also—is multi-level and multi-actor. It is local, national, regional and international, and engages civil society as well as national governments and international bodies.

As a starting point, every human being has the unequivocal right to seek asylum in another country, and every migrant—citizen or not, with regular status or not—has the same set of fundamental human rights as every other human being on the planet. At the international level, there are specific conventions and UN bodies created to provide additional governance—much of it legally binding on states—in specific slices or pieces of migration, e.g., refugees, children on the move and migrant workers to name a few. But most governance is left to individual states, acting as they see fit alone, bilaterally or internationally.

In simple terms, governance is an alternative to chaos; good governance is a guarantor of human security, and peace. So to consider the need for more or different governance of migration, let’s first look at the chaos—conspicuous chaos—that we see in migration today, and consider the human cost of that chaos. Of particular concern worldwide:

• Civil society is alarmed about policy choices taking governance towards more chaos

            • record lows in refugees being resettled, with low and inconsistent rates of asylum even for refugees from wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria

            • deepening policy disdain of family in migration

• the relentless atomization of migrants: workers, children, women, victims of trafficking—important, but also as if they didn’t have families; (e.g., “labour export”, “brain drain”: as Bishop Di Marzio often observes, it’s not just brains leaving, it’s people we’re talking about)
• the endemic break-up of families

• where one or both parents migrate to support the family but then lose it for years or forever because the laws of the country in which they work in do not allow them family unity there. Kevin Appleby of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is right when he calls forced migration one of the world’s greatest threats to family unity.
• breakup of families by deportation of the father or mother, even where spouses and children have legal status

• reducing admissions for family reunification in order to increase admissions for labour purposes: a zero-sum driver of family breakup that ignores the human right to family life and impedes integration, social cohesion and public order. It is important to watch the US immigration reform on this!

          • erasing labour rights and social protection in jobs of all kind—increasingly for citizen workers as well as migrant workers: cynically diminishing long-term, permanent and essential workers as only “temporary” in status and security and eviscerating core rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively

           • the criminalization reflex—not everywhere (Mexico recently repealed a law in that direction) but quite widely, and the emergence of the “enforcement industrial complex”: mega-patrols and controls; detention-first policies and forced return.

•  Governance must address the chaos of horrific pain and profit on migration journeys

            • the deaths and disappearances each year of tens of thousands of boat people and other migrants crossing deserts and other land borders, in every region of the world: lost, many unnamed where their lives and dreams end.

          • the boom in “human fracking” where, beyond human trafficking, beyond migrant smuggling and a giant step beyond more common forms of “commodifying” migrants, increasingly sophisticated quasi-state and non-state criminal networks are squeezing every last value out of migrants in transit—dollars, sex and human organs—using systemic kidnapping, rape, and telephoned torture, with relatives listening live. Last week in Geneva, our Catholic and NGO partners working in Mexico, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East spoke of a sudden explosion in such practices. One reported that among 100 migrants from the Sinai desert interviewed since January, “almost all” of the women had been raped along the way, many repeatedly, with the average ransom being paid: US $30,000.

• Finally: rising xenophobia. But consider: even in good economic times, an enormous pump for xenophobia is the public’s fear of chaos—the lack of effective governance.

The particular cruelty of all this chaos is that it is turbocharged by bad governance which forces people to migrate and then further forces much of that migration to be irregular and unsafe, with the following formula: inadequate development and no decent work to survive on at home, work and demand for migrant workers in other countries (even in bad economic times) but few legal channels to migrate. Our members in Asia, Africa and Latin America remind us that the first right is to not migrate. The second right is to be able to choose to migrate when necessary, and then safely.

So where is the actual governance in all this today? There are widely ratified international conventions and many national laws that touch on these things. But which mix of governments and other stakeholders is effectively implementing that governance, appropriately at all levels?

In the recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate, among others, the Church has called for better global governance—not exclusive of state sovereignty, but as a clear, complementary and effective exercise of shared interest, shared responsibility, and solidarity. To reduce this chaos.

2. What might better international governance look like?

• Does global governance mean “one (new?) UN institution”? Not necessarily. International governance can take multiple forms: possibly multiple institutions, processes, each focusing on slices and pieces of migration, but they must be better connected, with greater coverage, cooperation and coherence in their work.
• Does international governance of migration spell the “end” of state sovereignty? Not at all: we must avoid false opposites! Regional and international governance of migration are actually exercises of state sovereignty, extensions of state interest and action, even a pooling of sovereignty. It is complementary governance.
• Is such governance of migration completely “new” and untried—or too controversial specifically in migration? Let us recognize that all sorts of global governance of migration already existing well-known regimes and protocols for tourists and foreign students, refugees, victims of human trafficking and highly skilled migrant workers.
• Is improved governance needed just for vulnerable migrants, i.e., the “victims” Or only for “economic” migrants and actors? Often these are also presented as false opposites. Governance needs to address both, with coherence, including migrant-and business-friendly legal frameworks for visas, investment and other diaspora engagement in countries of origin.

3. Civil society thinking and role in where international governance of migration needs to move

The multiple movements of civil society are increasingly unified in message, worldwide, led by:

• migrants and diaspora associations
• NGOs—very much the NGO Committee on Migration here in New York; trade unions and worker organizations
• Church and other faith-based groups e.g., the Scalabrinians, Jesuits, ICMC and, Caritas; of course this third migrant Pope in a row, who himself took the name of a man-become-saint who embraced and was converted by lepers on the road.

On governance, a growing convergence of civil society actors says two things, loudly:

[1] Given so much chaos in international migration today, and the human cost of that chaos, the world needs to improve migration governance, urgently. For us, it is not a question of “will that happen?”, but when, and in what form.

[2] Whether we improve governance of migration with a new institution and/or a better system of cooperation, it must be norms-based, fully within a UN human rights framework.

This urgency and unity is a major element of the “5 year Action Agenda” [copies on the tables in the back] that civil society leaders and networks from around the world have proposed to governments for a concrete outcome of the High Level Dialogue at the UN General Assembly this October.

What is the governance outcome we ask from the HLD? A firm commitment of governments and civil society—servants, citizens and migrants—to work these next 5 years, collaboratively, co-responsibly and with determination, to figure out better governance across international conventions, institutions and actors. A distinct target for new governance is protecting migrant victims of violence and trauma in transit.

Is there hope only for slow progress? For miracles? There is more of both than we realize.

Close

In this conference on migration and peace then, permit me to close with words of an Irish poet:

“History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme,

So hope for a great sea-change…
Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles…

If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means that someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means that once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.”

/from The Cure at Troy, Seamus Heaney
 

Thank you.