Converging for a single outcome: A five year action plan for collaboration of civil society and states on international migration and development<

Published: August 2013-September 2013 (starting page 21)
IOM
By: John K. Bingham, Head of Policy ICMC.

A dialogue seven years in the making

We have been preparing for this Highlevel Dialogue for seven years,” one of the government participants said during a briefing that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) organized in Geneva on 3 July 2013, just two weeks before the civil society Hearings of the Highlevel Dialogue (HLD) at the United Nations headquarters in New York. “We have the opportunity to develop a coherent strategy”, to “pick up speed”, with “substance over process,” emphasized other participants.

Indeed, it has been a busy seven years since the first United Nations HLD on International Migration and Development in 2006. Consider the multiplication of effort during that period just in regional and international processes that discuss important issues of migration, including development. Over and beyond the increasingly regular meetings of regional consultative processes in virtually every region of the world, IOM’s acclaimed series of biannual International Dialogues on Migration, the annual High Commissioner’s Dialogue on Protection Challenges by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the expansion of the Global Migration Group (GMG) from 6 to the current 16 United Nations and international agencies, there have been six annual meetings of States and civil society in the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), each animated by “before, during and after” activities of States and civil society, including civil society’s annual international convening of the People’s Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights, three World Social Forums on Migration, and the Conversations on the Global Governance of Migration organized by the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC), with support from the Government of Switzerland.

In short, seven years of forums and working groups, roundtables and experts sessions, and consultations and conversations.

A range of changes and impact

Seven years of growing confidence, collaboration and impact – at times, growing slowly, but in many cases surprising both skeptics and believers. In his article in the preceding edition of Migration Policy Practice (Volume III, Number 3, June–July 2013, p. 3), the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Migration Peter Sutherland described a range of changes over the seven years of the Global Forum. Though virtually no one thought it would ever happen, over 150 countries have come together each year at the Global Forum – consistently – together with another 200 leaders of civil society from around the world and the full spectrum of international and regional bodies that deal with migration. Directly affecting the lives of migrants and their families everywhere, as well as the countries to and from which they migrate, the work of Governments, civil society and international organizations in and around the Global Forum contributed greatly to an almost 50 per cent drop in the cost of sending remittances, the milestone adoption of the Domestic Workers Convention, and tangible improvements in a number of national laws and policies regarding migrants and development, including child protection, labour migration and essential data collection. Also important, as 2014 GFMD Chair Ambassador Eva Åkerman Börje noted in Migration Policy Practice February–April 2013 issue (Volume III, Number 1, p. 3), “efforts have included mainstreaming migration into development policies, with the ultimate goal of including migration in broader national development planning processes and in the formulation of country strategies for bilateral development cooperation.”

So seven years of building – building relationships and trust among States and with civil society and other actors, and building a culture and habits of mature, results oriented exchange of perspectives and possibilities for action, on practice as well as in policy. Manifestly, seven years of considerable investment. As it bridges into and charges these next years, the 2013 HLD offers the moment to move from talk to action, to “convert on the investment” of the past seven years.

From collaboration to collabor-action

And it is none too soon, for the 215 million international migrants and their families and countries, and for the world. The world of human mobility and development itself has changed greatly in the same seven years. Over that period, it has become clear that nearly every country on the planet is either origin or destination of significant numbers of people on the move, with many countries both. Steady improvements in the collection of data underscore the role that unprecedented demographic trends have in driving – and in a growing number of recent cases reversing – migration, most notoriously negative fertility rates, longer lives and shrinking native working-age populations in the richer countries and the opposite in lower-income countries. Almost counter intuitively, but thanks to such demographic and labour/ skills imbalances, one of the longest and deepest global financial and employment crises in modern history has done little to change the national interest and employer need in many countries for more workers as well as the need of workers in other countries for jobs. Earnings and other financial transfers that international migrants send ”home” to their families and countries of origin are now nearly half a trillion US dollars a year which, just counting formally reported remittances, is already more than three times the official development assistance. And the first set of Millennium Development Goals – the world’s premier effort to cooperate to eradicate poverty and meet other development challenges – is up for renewal in 2015, possibly in a very different form, to be known as the post-2015 development agenda.

In this period of change and challenge then, perhaps it is no surprise that hesitation, low expectations and pre-occupation with States’ members-only meetings in the early Global Forum years has turned increasingly to approaches significantly more inclusive of civil society and, among both States and civil society, a shared hunger for more results from the discussions: an explicit orientation to frame action that is both achievable and measurable, with benchmarks.

Like Sutherland, Ambassador Åkerman Börje and so many of the United Nations and government leaders that have been active in these GFMD, post-2015 development and other processes, civil society actors around the world are eager to move, together with States, from process to substance, and from cross-talk to collaboration, on common ground that exists and on change that is needed. “In October this year,” writes Sutherland in his article cited previously, “after seven years of intensifying international engagement, the 192 United Nations Member States will convene again to discuss migration. This time, the summit must produce more than new processes like the Global Forum and the GMG. It should deliver an action-oriented agenda for how to create a safer, more transparent system of international mobility that protects the rights of migrants, serves shared economic interests, quells public anxieties about migration, and helps cast migrants less as scapegoats and more as vital members of our communities.”

Taking the High-level Dialogue seriously: Proposing a five-year collaboration with states

In that direction, civil society has stepped up and raised its own game. In preparation for this year’s HLD, civil society has proposed a five-year action plan, with benchmarks, for collaboration with governments on eight issues that are at the heart of some of the most important dynamics of migration and development today. The five-year plan is available in English, French and Spanish at http://hldcivilsociety.org/five-yearaction-agenda/<.

As presented later in this article, the issues are familiar to all engaged in the GFMD, in both its states and civil society components. Moreover, many of the issues have been the subject of concrete – and frequently quite similar – recommendations by States and civil society in those processes.

Meeting two weeks back-to-back during the civil society working sessions of the GFMD in Mauritius and the World Social Forum on Migration in the Philippines in November 2012, hundreds of civil society leaders from around the world developed and agreed on this action plan. The breakthrough in civil society’s thinking, and the heart of the whole plan, are the key words “five-year” and “collaboration”.

The driving force – and achievement – of these civil society working sessions, in a nutshell, is the unprecedented convergence of global civil society around this approach. “Convergence” here does not mean perfect consensus but clear common ground and imperatives among various civil society actors around the world.

 In fact, convergence among leading migration and development actors surged around the five-year plan, with a particular commitment to taking the following approach:

 • Avoiding “cliff-walking” at the HLD, that is, expecting that every decision can be made or will be ready to be considered during the HLD meetings on 3 and 4 October;

• Seeking shared commitment instead as a firm outcome of the HLD;

• Seeking one outcome from the HLD: a five-year collaboration between civil society and States on a defined set of issues (i.e. not 20 or 30).

Between December and April this year, over 100 national, regional and international civil society organizations submitted the action plan to the United Nations Second Committee, United Nations Member States and in various processes in and outside the United Nations, as a proposal for an explicit outcome at the HLD. This included the United Nations Coordination meeting, the GFMD Friends of the Forum and the Commission on Population and Development. (The names of the organizations are presented on the plan at the website on page 14.)

Convergence moving forward

The five-year plan has been at the heart of much of civil society’s worldwide preparation for the HLD, for advocacy in general, in the “Informal Interactive Hearings” with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society and the private sector at the United Nations headquarters in New York on 15 July and towards the HLD itself on 3 and 4 October. In the run-up to the hearings, leaders of NGOs, trade unions, migrant and diaspora associations, academia and the private sector organized 21 meetings around the world in preparation for the HLD, including:

• Regional consultations in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Canada–United States, Europe, South America and West Asia (a consolidated report of messages and recommendations of these meetings is available from their organizer, the Global Coalition on Migration, at http://hldcivilsociety.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/07/Consolidated-Global-Report-from-Regional-Consultations.pdf)<;

• National consultations in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Mexico, Nepal, South Korea, Thailand and the United Kingdom;

• Thematic consultations in the Netherlands (European Diaspora Conference), Switzerland (Joint Reflections on Migration and Development), Germany and Switzerland (Regional Diaspora and Development Roundtable) and the United States with support from Mexico (Fourth International Forum on Migration and Peace).

All told, some 600 civil society actors worldwide participated in these consultations and meetings ahead of and specifically linked to the HLD. (A full list of these events and organizers is available at http://hldcivilsociety.org/activities/<.) Representatives from these meetings were then brought together with other civil society migration and development leaders who had come to New York for two full days of preparatory meetings on the Saturday and Sunday immediately preceding the hearings.

At the recommendation of civil society leaders and networks around the world, and at the invitation of the Office of the President of the United Nations General Assembly, the ICMC organized the programme of the hearings, working closely with a 31-member international Civil Society Steering Committee for the HLD and with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The programmes for the weekend of preparatory meetings and the hearings were directly linked, with the five-year action plan as the explicit blueprint for both.

At the hearings, 400 representatives of grass-roots, regional and international civil society organizations presented their experience and recommendations on the eight points of the five-year plan to 100 governments, the European Union, and United Nations and other intergovernmental agencies. About half of the organizations were migrant or migrant led; many of the speakers were migrants themselves. In addition to 49 speakers from diaspora and migrant organizations, human rights and development groups, labour organizations, and the private sector, representatives of the Governments of Australia, Bangladesh, Israel, Mexico, the Philippines, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States as well as the European Union and IOM took the floor. (The full programme and list of presenters is available at http://hldcivilsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Final-ProgrammeInteractive-Hearings-15-July.pdf<.)

In his opening address at the hearings, Sutherland commended civil society for the seriousness of its engagement and in particular for proposing the five-year, eight-point collaboration with governments. “Today civil society is becoming a true partner. Civil society has upped its game, offering a focused, smart and practical agenda drawing on profound field experience, focusing on action rather than rhetoric.” Civil society’s work on the ground and its proposal to governments speak loudly to a determination to come together and commit together so that the coming HLD, as Sutherland put it, does “not lead to just a sterile debate without practical solutions.”

 The five-year, eight-point action plan

 As a distinct outcome of the HLD, civil society proposes to collaborate with States during the next five years for measurable progress on the following eight points, two points each corresponding to the four HLD Roundtables as indicated:

 • Corresponding most directly to HLD Roundtable 1, focusing on development issues

 1. Integration of migration into the post-2015 development agenda to address not only the contributions that migrants make to development in countries of origin and destination, but also the possibilities for better policy planning and coherence that can make migration more genuinely a choice and not a necessity, and greater gain than drain. This development agenda would work to affirm both the right to migrate and the right to remain at home with decent work and human security. As such, it links migration to United Nations development concerns regarding poverty, health, gender equality, financing for development and sustainable development, and to future development goals.

 2. Models and frameworks that facilitate the engagement of diaspora and migrant associations as entrepreneurs, social investors, policy advocates and partners in setting and achieving priorities for the full range of human development in countries of origin, heritage and destination.2

 • Corresponding most directly to HLD Roundtable 2, focusing on the rights of migrants

3. Reliable, multi-actor mechanisms to address the assistance and protection needs of migrants stranded in distress, beginning with those trapped in situations of war, conflict or disaster (natural or man-made) but with the same logic and urgency with respect to migrant victims of violence or trauma in transit. This should include specific attention to egregious gaps in protection and assistance for migrant women who are raped, and the thousands of children that are unaccompanied and abused along the major migration corridors in every region of the world. Benchmarks could include further work and multi-stakeholder capacity-building on frameworks developed by agencies with such responsibilities including IOM, UNHCR and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and the consolidation of relevant principles and practices under existing refugee, humanitarian and human rights laws.

4. Models and frameworks that address the needs and rights of migrant women in their specificity, including policies and programmes that enable women workers to have the choice whether to migrate or remain in home countries, and legislation that enables migrant women, regardless of status, to have access to basic services, recourse to the justice system, and protection against all forms of violence. The rights of migrant women should be addressed as a separate goal and also seen as a cross-cutting concern in all of the seven goals. In addition, mechanisms should consider the best interests of children in the context of migration, including their rights.

 • Corresponding most directly to HLD Roundtable 3, focusing on partnerships

5. Benchmarks for promoting the exchange of good practices and enactment and implementation of national legislation to comply with the full range of provisions in international conventions that pertain to migrants even outside the labour sphere, with particular concern for rights in the context of enforcement policies, rights to basic social protection and due process.

6. Redefinition of the interaction of international mechanisms of migrants’ rights protection, which recognizes the roles of the GFMD and the GMG, albeit limited, revives emphasis of the distinct mandate of the International Labour Organization (ILO) for worker protection, and more coherently, aligns protection activity of agencies including ILO, IOM, UNHCR, OHCHR and UNODC. This would be in the context of the United Nations normative framework, and involve a thorough evaluation of the GFMD process, including questions of accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and outcomes. A goal would be to institutionalize the participation of civil society in future governance mechanisms.

• Corresponding most directly to HLD Roundtable 4, focusing on labour mobility

7. Identification or creation, and implementation, of effective standards and mechanisms to regulate the migrant labour recruitment industry, an outcome that civil society is convinced is within reach, thanks to a growing convergence towards reform among countries of origin, transit and destination, and among private sector actors and funders as well as NGOs, trade unions and migrants themselves. Benchmarks could include a global synthesis of existing recruitment problems and solutions, national or transnational; a global convening of legitimate private recruitment actors; and development of a compact on reducing abuses in the recruitment field.

8. Mechanisms to guarantee labour rights for migrant workers equal to the rights of nationals, including the rights to equal pay and working conditions, to form and organize in trade unions, to ensure portability of pensions, and to have paths to citizenship for migrant workers and their families. This recognizes the long-term needs of many nations for migrant workers, while guaranteeing human security and rights to those workers to meet economic, demographic and development needs while affirming the States’ role to protect the rights of all workers. Benchmarks could include addressing the movement of peoples in the global trade agenda and national progress in complying with the worker-related international conventions, in particular ratification and implementation of the United Nations Migrant Workers Convention and the ILO Convention on Domestic Workers.

Of course, civil society recognizes the central role of States in legislating and implementing effective policy regarding migration, development and human rights, and the non-derogable obligation of States to protect the rights of migrants. In turn, civil society stands ready to support the five-year plan as both advocates and partners.

Collaboration for the common good

What civil society asks of the HLD is a firm commitment of governments to work together with civil society these next five years to figure out how to better connect practical tools – many of which exist, to roll up the sleeves together, and to cooperate more directly on some of the genuine promise and hard questions in migration today. Such questions include how to regulate private agencies that recruit, place and often abuse foreign workers; how to better respond to boat people and other migrants seriously hurt or traumatized in migration journeys (many at the hands of human traffickers, smugglers and other criminals); how to set and achieve global goals for development that provide countries and people decent work at home and other alternatives to forced migration; how to build and strengthen rights-based systems for legal labour migration and working conditions; and how to further promote the positive engagement of migrants and diaspora communities in countries to and from which they have migrated.

Recognizing the complexity, urgency and opportunities in migration and development today, this means focusing first on the human rights of migrants – on basic fairness, on development that is fully human and sustainable as well as economic, and on social protection, all of which combine to promote the common good of our families, communities, countries and world.