World Policy for Migrants And Refugees
World Policy for Migrants And Refugees
By René Wadlow
«There is no doubt that
Mankind is once more on the move. The very foundations have
been shaken and loosened, and things are again fluid. The
tents have been struck, and the great caravan of Humanity is
once more on the
march.»
Jan Christian
Smuts at the end of the 1914-1918 World
War.
On September 19, 2016, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly held a one-day Summit on “Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants”, a complex of issues which have become important and emotional issues in many countries. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) published a report on international migration indicating that there are some 244 million migrants, some 76 million live in Europe, 75 million in Asia, 54 million in North America and others in the Middle East, Latin America and the Pacific, especially Australia and New Zealand. In addition, there are some 24 million refugees – people who have crossed State frontiers fleeing armed conflict and repression as well as some 40 million internally-displaced persons within their own country. Acute poverty, armed conflicts, population growth and high unemployment levels provide the incentives for people to move, while easier communications and transport are the means.
However, as we have seen with the many who have died in the Mediterranean Sea, people will take great risks to migrate. Thus, there is an urgent need to take away the monopoly of the life and death of refugees from the hands of mafias and traffickers and to create an effective world policy for migrants and refugees.
This is the third
time that the major governments of the world have tried to
deal in an organized way with migration and refugees. The
first was within the League of Nations in the 1920s. The
1914-1918 World War and the 1917 Russian Revolution had
created a large number of refugees and “stateless”
persons – citizens of the former Russian, Ottoman, and
Austro-Hungarian Empires. These people had no passports or
valid identity documents. The League of Nations created a
League identity document – the Nansen Passport – which
gave some relief to the “stateless” and brought
international attention to their conditions. The Nansen
Passport, however, became overshadowed in the mid-1930 when
people – in particular Jews – fled from Germany-Austria
and were refused resettlement.
The second international effort was as a result of the experiences of the 1939-1945 Second World War and the large number of refugees and displaced. Under UN leadership was created the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees. In addition, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, originally created as a temporary body, was made a permanent UN agency in recognition of the continuing nature of refugee issues.
The current third international effort is largely a result of the flow of refugees and migrants toward Europe during 2015-2016. The disorganized and very uneven response of European governments and the European Union to this flow has indicated that governments are unprepared to deal with such massive movements of people. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have not been able to deal adequately with this large number of persons despite many good-will efforts. Moreover, certain European political movements and political parties have used the refugee issue to promote narrow nationalist and sometimes racist policies. Even a much smaller flow of refugees to the USA has provoked very mixed reactions – few of them welcoming.
The
September 19 Summit is a first step toward creating a
functioning world policy for migrants and refugees. The
Summit is not an end in itself but follows a pattern of UN
awareness-building conferences on the environment,
population, food, urbanization and other world issues. The
impact of UN conferences has been greatest when there are
preexisting popular movements led by NGOs which have in part
sensitized people to the issue. The two UN conferences which
have had the most lasting consequences were the 1972
Stockholm conference on the environment and the 1975
International Year of Women and its Mexico conference. The
environment conference was held at a time of growing popular
concern with the harm to the environment symbolized by the
widely-read book of Rachel Carson Silent Spring. The 1975
women’s conference came at a time when in Western Europe
and the USA there was a strong “women’s lib” movement
and active discussion on questions of equality and
gender.
Migration and refugee issues do not have a well-organized NGO structure highlighting these issues. However human rights NGOs have stressed the fate of refugees and migrants as well as human rights violations in the countries from which they fled. There is also some cooperation among relief NGOs which provide direct help to refugees and migrants such as those from Syria and Iraq living in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and those going to Greece and Italy.
The Summit’s Declaration is very general, and
some observers have been disappointed with the lack of
specific measures. However, we can welcome the spirit of the
Summit Declaration with its emphasis on cooperative action,
a humane sense of sharing the responsibilities for refugees
and migrants and on seeking root causes of migration and
refugee flows. What is needed now are strong NGO efforts to
remind constantly government authorities of the seriousness
of the issues and the need for collective action. Refugees
and migrants are not a temporary “emergency” but part of
a continuing aspect of the emerging world society. Thus
there is a need to develop a world policy and strong
institutions for migrants and refugees.
Prof. René
Wadlow is President of the Association of World
Citizens.