The world is on the move...

migration

The world faces immense challenges of sustainable development. Billions of people continue to live in poverty and are deprived of a life of dignity. Migration is recognised as a central dimension of globalisation, touching almost all countries around the world. Migration has traditionally been conceived as a movement from the poor ‘global South’ to the rich ‘global North’.

According to statistics, one billion people, one-seventh of the world’s population, are migrants. Some 258 million people are international migrants, 40 million are internally displaced and 24 million are refugees or asylum seekers. Work is the main reason people move to another country, and the falling cost of travel has made it easier to do so. In addition, changing labour markets increase both opportunities and pressures for people to migrate.

“We live in a time with major migration, indeed forced migration. People smuggling and trafficking is a growing problem. In USA, there is constant discussion about how to keep illegal immigrants out, and the current president says he wants to build a wall on the southern border with Mexican border. In Europe, the influx of more than a million immigrants in 2015, and high numbers also after that, led politicians and people in some countries to term it a ‘crisis’. Many countries have developed new and stricter immigration policies in order to limit the number of refugees and ordinary migrants, legal or illegal,” observes Atle Hetland, a renowned international journalist.

In the management of global migration, the world is clinging to outdated infrastructure and patterns of mobility, says Canadian senator Ratna Omidvar, member of the Global Future Council on Migration. “It’s incredible to imagine that, because of visa restrictions, people are willing to risk their lives to find safety and opportunity. They will pay ten times what a legal trip on an airplane would cost, huge sums of money, to make dangerous overland trips or flee on unsafe boats. This is because we are intentionally making it difficult for people to migrate. We need more channels of safe, legal migration,” comments Ranta Omidvar in one of her interviews. “Unless we fix issues of global governance, we are going to see the hardening of attitudes in certain regions because they don’t see the opportunity in migration. One hurdle that still remains for migrants is coming to a new country where their qualifications are not recognised. On top of this type of structural barrier, we know that immigrants face discrimination and bias, which impacts their work and well-being,” she adds.

Pakistan chapter

The total population in Pakistan was estimated at 212.2 million people in 2018, according to the latest census figures. Looking back, in the year of 1960, Pakistan had a population of 45.0 million people. The rapid increase in population and labour force has posed serious challenges of poverty and unemployment in the country. Pakistan relies heavily on labour migration as an avenue for reducing both unemployment and poverty. Overseas Pakistanis are almost eight million people, with over four million in the Middle-East, one and a half million in UK, close to half a million in USA, and sizeable numbers in many European countries including Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and elsewhere.

Though Pakistani migrant workers can be found in almost all countries of the globe, most of them concentrate in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar. The changing dynamics of Gulf economics have led to a 60% decline in migration trends, as compared to the past years. In 2017, only 496,286 Pakistani workers were registered for foreign employment mostly in United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman. Although most overseas Pakistanis are labourers, many are also skilled workers and professionals; few are women.

Key challenges:

Migrant workers have contributed heavily to Pakistan’s development through the remitting of their earnings, yet, there is little recognition of their contribution to the development of their communities in Pakistan as well as their destination countries. And despite their valuable contributions, they are subjected to extensive abuse and exploitation during the recruitment and employment stages of their migration journey.

High recruitment costs, non-compliance with their placement terms, changes in the terms and conditions of the employment and/or reduced wages; precarious working conditions; discrimination and inequalities at the work place as well as skills underutilisation and job mismatch are the more common issues migrant workers encounter. Several thousand Pakistanis seek to go abroad through irregular means each year. They face several dangers during an irregular journey and risk to be returned back to Pakistan. Due to lack of knowledge and awareness in terms of opportunities available to them as a regular or irregular migrant in a foreign country, people often make poor choices. The immigrants have little say over their work and employment conditions. They depend entirely on the policies and economic conditions of the host countries.

More than half of Pakistani migrants borrow money to finance their migration, and of these more than three-quarters rely on a friend or relative to finance the journey, according to a 2016 ILO survey. Pakistani migrants pay some of the highest recruitment fees in the world for the opportunity to work abroad, says Nasir Iqbal, an Islamabad-based researcher who has studied the cost of Gulf migration. “Migrants who rely on friends or family to find jobs often pay astronomical recruitment fees, resulting in asset depletion and heavy debt traps. Part of the problem derives from the fact that most Pakistani migrants organise their jobs outside of the government’s official channels - raising the cost exponentially,” writes Sabrina Toppa, an award-winning journalist based in Pakistan covering migration, labour, and human rights.

Female migrants: Although female migrant workers are fewer in number, evidence shows extensive abuse against female domestic workers. Much more research is needed, however, on female migrant workers’ lives in destination countries. Also needed is strengthening of the labour migration governance system and policy framework.

The joint efforts:

Migration draws increasing attention in the world nowadays. Mixed with elements of unforeseeability, emergency, and complexity, the challenges and difficulties of international migration require enhanced cooperation and collective action among countries and regions. The United Nations is actively playing a catalyst role in this area, with the aim of creating more dialogues and interactions within countries and regions, as well as propelling experience exchange and collaboration opportunities.

IOM: International Organization of Migration initiated its work in Pakistan in 1981 following a government request for assistance with the influx of Afghans into the country. The organisation has since expanded its programmes to support a broad range of activities from humanitarian response to migration management. Pakistan signed as a Member State of IOM in 1992 and established a Cooperation Agreement with IOM in October 2000.

MRCs: To reduce the information gap on migration, two Migrant Resource Centres (MRCs) were established in Islamabad and Lahore in early 2016 with the combined efforts of the Government of Pakistan, the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) and the International Labour Organization (ILO). Currently being run by the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development and ICMPD in Islamabad; and the Ministry of Labour and Human Resource Department and ICMPD in Lahore, MRCs serve to increase the accessibility to general and definite information on migration to the people of Pakistan.

The REFRAME Project by ILO: ILO’s Fair Recruitment initiative, which was launched in 2014, is a global initiative to prevent human trafficking and forced labour; protect the rights of workers, including migrant workers, from abusive and fraudulent recruitment and placement processes; and to reduce the cost of labour migration and enhance development outcomes for migrant workers and their families as well as for countries of origin and destination.

The REFRAME project seeks to support the dissemination and operationalisation of the ILO’s general principles and operational guidelines for fair recruitment at global; regional and national level.

International Migrants Day

International Migrants Day is observed on 18 December in accordance with Resolution 55/93 of the United Nations General Assembly, adopted on 4 December 2000, taking into account the large and increasing number of migrants in the world.

On that day, a decade earlier, the assembly adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Earlier celebrations of the day can be traced as far back as 1997 when some Asian migrant organisations marked December 18 as the day to recognise the rights, protection, and respect for migrants.

Today, this day is observed in many countries, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations through the dissemination of information on human rights and fundamental political freedoms of migrants, and through sharing of experiences and the design of actions to ensure the protection of migrants.

On September 19, 2016 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a set of commitments during its first ever summit on large movements of refugees and migrants to enhance the protection of refugees and migrants. These commitments are known as the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants (NY Declaration). The NY Declaration reaffirms the importance of the international protection regime and represents a commitment by Member States to strengthen and enhance mechanisms to protect people on the move. It paves the way for the adoption of two new global compacts in 2018: the global compact on refugees and the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration.

—Erum Noor Muzaffar