Issue 24: March-April 2003

COMMENT

Migrants: Millions are on the move

The number of people living outside their countries of birth has jumped from 70 million 30 years ago to 185 million today. The large majority of migrants are lawful residents making valuable contributions to their host countries. Yet the size of the migrant wave is creating social and political stresses around the world.

From Europe and North America to Asia, the entry and treatment of migrants and asylum seekers has become a battleground for elections and raw emotions. In Northeast Asia, for example, refugees from North Korea arouse strong feelings. More than 60 North Koreans were recently arrested in China hours before they were to board two fishing boats that were purchased to smuggle them to Japan and South Korea, human rights activists reported this week.

The world would probably gain a lot more from liberalizing migration than from eliminating barriers to world trade. A study published in New Zealand last month showed that the arrival of more than 38,000 immigrants, mostly from China and India, in the first 11 months of 2002 fueled New Zealand's economy by pushing up demand for new houses and furnishings. Yet there, too, anti-immigration politicians have done well in recent elections.

The number of refugees, internally displaced people and asylum seekers around the world jumped by 50 percent in one decade, from fewer than 15 million in 1990 to more than 22 million in 2000. Refugees are often a symptom of a deeper malaise in the countries from which they have fled.

The selling of vulnerable young women into sexual bondage has become one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in the global economy. The U.S. State Department estimates that some 700,000 persons, mainly women and children, are trafficked each year across international borders.

The demons of displacement include too much government, leading to tyranny; too little government, leading to anarchy; civil and international warfare; economic collapse; epidemics; ethnic cleansing and mass expulsions.

Contrary to popular Western belief, the burden of coping with uprooted people is borne mainly by the developing countries. About three-quarters of the world's refugees are in Asia and Africa, only one-quarter in Europe and North America.

The growing movement of people is a problem not just for the transit and destination countries but also for the countries of origin, which lose people with energy and talent. We lack accurate information about the dynamics of migration or the national and global economic and political consequences. We do not even have internationally agreed definitions of the terms "citizenship" and "residence."

Humanitarian responses must be guided by protection principles, not political expediency. But the refugee problem is political as well as humanitarian. To the extent that the problem of refugees is exacerbated by weak and poor states, the solution is to help them strengthen their economies and institutional foundations.

There needs to be better early warning of imminent humanitarian tragedy. Nongovernmental organizations can be especially useful here. But in many recent cases the real need has been to make the international community heed such warnings in time.

Ramesh Thakur is UNU Vice Rector and director of the Peace and Governance Programme. This commentary first appeared in the January 22 edition of the International Herald Tribune. These are his personal views.

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