Introduction – Special issue on the United Nations High-level Dialogue on Migration and Development: Comparing 2006 and 2013<

Published: August 2013-September 2013
IOM
By: Solon Ardittis and Frank Laczko

Welcome to the twelfth issue of Migration Policy Practice<. This issue focuses on the upcoming United Nations High-level Dialogue (HLD) on Migration and Development. For only the second time in its history, the United Nations General Assembly will focus on international migration and its implications for development. As UN Special Representative for Migration Peter Sutherland noted in the previous issue of Migration Policy Practice, the summit in New York must generate action and deepen cooperation between States to maximize the benefits of migration for development. The HLD also provides the international community with an opportunity to underline the importance of integrating migration into the emerging post-2015 development framework. Migration was barely mentioned in year 2000 when the Millennium Development Goals, targets and indicators were framed. Today, there is much greater discussion of the case for integrating migration into the global development agenda (see, for example, IOM, 2013a).

Let’s briefly look at how migration trends have changed since the first HLD on migration and development in 2006. In many ways, the challenges remain the same. The number of migrants has increased somewhat but remains at around 3.2 per cent of the world’s population (UN DESA, 2013). New data from Gallup presented in a previous issue of Migration Policy Practice (May–June 2013) shows that 8 per cent of adults have moved within their countries in the past five years. Gallup estimates that 381 million adults worldwide can be counted as internal migrants during this period.

We do not know what proportion of the world’s migrants are living or working in an irregular situation – some estimates suggest the figure could be around 30–40 million persons. But there is evidence to suggest that the scale of irregular migration has decreased since 2006 in some regions, notably Europe and North America due to the impact of the global economic crisis. For example, in the United States, the estimated number of irregular migrants fell from 12 million in 2007 to 11 million in 2011 (Pew Research Center, 2013). In Europe, the number of attempted illegal border crossings at the EU external 1 Solon Ardittis is Managing Director of Eurasylum Ltd. and Frank Laczko is Head of the Migration Research Division at IOM Headquarters in Geneva. They are the co-editors of Migration Policy Practice. borders fell from 468,840 in 2011 to 427,195 in 2012 (European Commission, 2013).

Although the number of migrants has not increased substantially, the figure for remittances received by developing countries has increased significantly from USD 221 billion in 2006 to USD 401 billion in 2012 (World Bank, 2013). Remarkably, however, only a minority of all migrants send remittances. Figures from the World Migration Report 2013, based on a global survey conducted by Gallup, show that only 27 per cent of migrants living in high-income countries in the North “send financial help to another country,” and the figure falls to 8 per cent for migrants in the South (IOM, 2013b).

The first HLD in 2006 led to the creation of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD). The GFMD, an informal, non-binding, States-led process has helped to change the way in which migration and development challenges are framed. For example, there is now a growing recognition that migration is not simply due to a lack of development. Approximately one third of all migrants move between developing countries, and a small but growing percentage of migrants are moving from richer countries in the North to developing countries in the South (IOM, 2013b, and Migration Policy Practice, June–July 2013). Only a minority of all migrants, about 40 per cent, migrate from the South to the North (IOM, 2013b). Indeed, a higher percentage of people living in the North (5.2%) migrate to another country than those living in the South (2.5%), according to figures from UNDESA for 2010 (IOM, 2013b). In absolute terms, the majority of international migrants are from countries in the South, given the much larger size of the global population residing in lower- and middle-income countries in the South.

But there are many new challenges. There is now a much greater awareness compared with 2006 that changes in the environment, and climate change in particular, are likely to affect the movement of people in the coming years. There is also a greater recognition of the needs of vulnerable migrants caught up in crisis situations. The recent conflict in Libya, which led to the return of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to their countries of origin, has added a new dimension to the migration and development debate.

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MPP12.pdf (1.01 MB)