Concept Note Session 4, 2019 LAC-DAC Dialogue on Development Co-operation

1. CONCEPT NOTE FOR SESSION 4
ADDRESSING MIGRATION CHALLENGES THROUGH
DEVELOPMENT CO-OPERATION
Paris, France | 21 February 2019
1) Harnessing the potential of migration to advance sustainable development goals
Tragic stories of the plight of migrants are regular headline items in the media today, making migration one of
the top priority issues of concern for both government and wider public worldwide. Contemporary large-scale
international migration is both complex and challenging, bringing together diverse issues ranging from
socio-economic challenges, international relations, human rights violations and the safety and security of
states. For millennia, migratory processes have enabled human societies to satisfy their basic needs such as
access to food, safety, work, power and general well-being. These motivations still trigger contemporary
migration; yet, in a world of dwindling natural resources, demographic growth, increasing interconnectedness
and rising populism, the reaction to migrants’ trends is often tinted with fear and hatred. Women migrants
and refugees in particular are at greater risk of exploitation and abuse, including trafficking; migration can also
increase women’s access to education and economic resources, and can improve their autonomy and status.
Notwithstanding the growing body of evidence that the workforce and cultural diversity that migrants bring
to host countries contribute positively to their development1
, perceptions in host and transit countries of
migrants as being threatening to livelihoods and socio-cultural norms, is on the rise.
Yet in spite of the growing prominence of migration as a phenomenon in the public sphere, there is currently
no global consensus on the definition of migration itself. According to the International Organisation for
Migration’s (IOM2
), an international migrant is a person who regardless of his legal status, the cause of his/her
movement or the length of his/her stay, is moving or has moved across an international border away from
his/her country of usual residence3
.
While refugees’ and asylum seekers’4
rights have long been addressed by international legal instruments, only
recently has the international community agreed on a framework that sets out guidelines for how migrants
should be treated. The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants5
has established some basic principles
1
ODI Report: Migration and the 2030 Agenda.
2
https://www.iom.int/who-is-a-migrant
3
The country of usual residence is that in which the person has a place to live where he or she normally spends the daily period of
rest. Also, people travelling abroad temporarily for purposes of recreation, holiday, business, medical treatment or religious pilgrimage
should not be included in the international migrant group, as these cases do not imply a change in the country of usual residence
(World Migration report 2018).
4
1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and 1967 protocol to the refugee convention
5
A/Res/71/1 Adopted by the United Nations general Assembly on 19 September 2016.

2. and the ensuing Global Compact for Safe and Orderly Migration6
has set objectives for better managing
migration at local, national, regional and global levels.
According to 2017 estimates, there are currently 258 million7
international migrants8
globally (3.4% of the
world’s population). The trend has been on the rise since 1990. Migrant workers constitute a large majority of
the world’s international migrants, with most living in high-income countries and many engaged in the service
sector. Most international migrants in 2015 (around 72%) were of working age (20 to 64 years of age), 52% of
international migrants are male. An unprecedented 68.5 million people around the world have been forced
from home. Among them are nearly 25.4 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18.
Developing countries are hosting up to 85% of the world’s displaced people9
.
The growing scope and complexity of population movements also requires more focus on “mixed movements”
including migrants and refugees, in which persons with different objectives move alongside each other using
the same routes that can create challenges for States as well as risks for individuals travelling as part of such
movements.10
Increasing awareness of the broader phenomenon of migration and the ongoing development
of migration laws and policies by States can offer new opportunities for both migrants and refugees, as well
as assistance for other persons travelling as part of mixed movements.
Migration trends as a whole are deeply influenced by regional geopolitical dynamics. Generalising findings on
migration across a large spectrum of countries regrouped as LAC or DAC can be misrepresentative of the
phenomenon at national level. This is particularly true for DAC countries whose broad geographical spread
expose them to different migratory trends. According to the World Migration Report, migration has doubled
in size in Northern America over the last 25 years and is dominated by immigration into the region. Over 51
million migrants were residing in Northern America from a variety of regions in 2015, with the largest migrant
groups originating from the LAC region (25 million), Asia (15.5 million) and Europe (7.5 million). In DAC
countries outside Canada and the United States, intraregional migration is particularly dynamic. A striking
illustration of this is the fact that the number of Europeans living outside Europe has mostly declined during
the last 25 years, except for the past five years when it rose back to just under 20 million (similar to the level
in 1990). Notwithstanding this tendency for intraregional migration, these countries experience significant
heterogeneity of cause and type of migration. While economic and environmental challenges influence
emigration from Pacific Island countries towards Australia and New Zealand, Europe is faced with arrivals of
large numbers of labour migrants and refugees to Europe via the Mediterranean. Almost one third of the
world’s international migrants (75 million) lived in Europe in 2015. Migration issues have remained high on
the European agenda in 2016 and 2017 and have regularly been tackled in ministerial and heads of State or
government meetings.
The LAC region is a region of origin, destination and transit of international migrants. Since the beginning of
the twenty-first century, population movement in South America has demonstrated variations in direction,
intensity and composition. Simultaneous flows of emigrants, immigrants and refugees or refuge seekers have
been observed within South America. Out of the 258 million migrants, approximately 29.611
million originate
from LAC countries, with Mexico at the top of the list (12.5 million) followed by Colombia and Brazil. As of
September 2018, around 2.6 million Venezuelans are currently living abroad, including 2 million across
6
The Global Compact for Migration was published in 2018. It is a non-legally binding cooperative framework built on the foundations
of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants and within the Framework of Agenda 2030 to foster international cooperation
among all relevant actors on migration.
7
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/data/estimates2/estimates17.shtml
8
IOM Definition of the word migrant
9
https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html
10
UNHCR, Refugee Protection and Mixed Migration - The 10-Point Plan in action,
https://www.unhcr.org/50a4c2b09.html
11
World Migration Report, 2018.

3. countries within Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Nearly 70 per cent of them have left the country
between 2015 and 201812
. Different forces drive the migratory processes from and within the LAC region. The
deceleration of economic growth in Latin America and the global recovery from the 2008 financial crisis in
advanced economies has resulted in an overall increase in labour migration intraregionally and internationally.
Family-related migration is also a strong incentive and is relatively more common among permanent migrants
whereas work-related migration is mostly prevalent among temporary migrants. To a lesser extent, student
migration is visible in all destination countries but mostly account for temporary migration. Humanitarian
migration has been a growing trend since 2001; the main countries of origin being Venezuela and Colombia.
Overall, socioeconomic conditions and generalized community-level violence in a number of LAC countries
contribute to migration, notably of high numbers of women and children.
In terms of support for these forcibly displaced people, an OECD survey shows that USD 204.87 million in ODA
was provided for programmes and projects supporting refugees and their host communities in the LAC region
between 2015 and 201713
. Of this, the majority – USD 201.19 million or 98% - was humanitarian finance.
One of the most salient changes in migration from the LAC region is the increasing presence of women among
migrants. Yet, migrant women are more likely to be the subject of discrimination and abuses, and frequently
due to the nature of their work, their labour goes virtually unnoticed. Migrant women’s labour force is
essentially concentrated in personal service and caring occupation which with lower wages and meagre
opportunities for advancement. Additionally, illegal commercial activities that exploit vulnerable women,
particularly trafficking that target migrant women for sexual exploitation make women migrants more
vulnerable than their male counter-parts.
In countries of origin, massive emigration drains away workforce (skilled and unskilled labour) thus weakening
already fragile socioeconomic ecosystems. Migration routes and transit countries are most often rife with
human right violations issues ranging from organized crime, human trafficking and other abuses. Regardless
of the rising populism, the negative perception of migration and the human rights violations, development
research data holds that migration is an overwhelmingly positive story. The web of interactions between host
communities, migrants and those locations from which they travel is one of great economic, social and cultural
richness14
.
2) Action needs to be locally-led and rooted in specific contexts
Large-scale migration is emerging as a global issue requiring global solutions, which effectively link migration
to sustainable development. A range of initiatives have been launched to help provide some definitional clarity
15
about the phenomenon, formulate16
comprehensive, coherent and global frameworks, and examine the
relationships and synergies between international migration and development17
. Additionally, different global
fora1819
have convened policy makers to discuss issues relevant to ‘the migration – development nexus’, while
others have successfully gathered civil society and the private sector to discuss links between migration and
business20
.
12
IOM, 2018: Migration Trends in the Americas (link to website here)
13
Forichon, K. (2018), "Financing Refugee Hosting Contexts: An analysis of the DAC’s contribution to burden- and responsibility-
sharing in supporting refugees and their host communities", OECD Development Co-operation Working Papers, No. 48, OECD
Publishing, Paris,https://doi.org/10.1787/24db9b07-en.
14
ODI Report: Migration and the 2030 Agenda.
15
The 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development
16
The 2003 Global Commission on International Migration
17
The 2006, 2013 High-level Dialogues on Migration
18
The 2006 Global Forum on Migration and Development
19
The 2006 Global Migration Group
20
The 2016 Global Forum for Migration and Development Business Meeting

4. These have culminated in the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants that laid the groundwork for
the Global Compact on Migration (GCM). This body of work aims to leverage the potential of migration for the
achievement of all Sustainable Development Goals. In Objective 23 of the GCM, signatories commit to
aligning the implementation of the GCM, the 2030 Agenda and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, recognising
that migration and sustainable development are multidimensional and interdependent. Signatories to the
New York Declaration have committed to ensuring that responses to large movements of refugees and
migrants promote gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, and fully respect and protect
the human rights of women and girls. With the implementation of the Compact, lies the potential for real
change. While the framework and aspirations are global, action needs to be locally-led and rooted in specific
contexts, countries, regions and markets where particular development opportunities and challenges exist
(Foresti, 2017).
3) What is next? How can we work together?
The 2030 Agenda has necessary political ‘traction’ in different member states and in the multilateral system,
critical to guaranteeing high-level buy-in. Furthermore, because of the SDGs’ multi-disciplinary nature, the
potential for multi-stakeholder collaboration is increased (Mosler Vidal, 2017).The 2030 Agenda includes a
number of targets, which recognise the economic value of migrants including SDGs 4, 5, 8, 10, 16 and 17. In
particular, target 10.7 – the cornerstone of migration in the 2030 Agenda – calls for the facilitation of ‘safe,
regular and responsible migration’ and the implementation of ‘well-managed migration policies’. Equally,
effective approaches to the dilemmas of mixed movements will inevitably require full cooperation amongst
the key actors concerned.
SDGs data needs to be disaggregated by migratory and gender status. Timely and reliable data capable of
achieving impact on migration, will help guide policy makers in devising evidence-based policies and plans of
action to tackle migration aspects of the SDGs. There are additional aspects which could be useful for future
work on migration, like (among others) taking account of how gender shapes different migrants’ needs and
situations, inclusive governance approaches as well as the financing of transition countries.
Advocacy towards and education in host countries, with a view to changing negative perceptions of migrants
and migration, and highlighting their positive contributions to the economy and social fabric of host countries,
can also help to develop positive narratives.
If countries are to achieve the SDGs, they need to consider the impact of migration at all levels and on all
outcomes. Migration is not a development ‘problem’ to be solved (as in the subtext of SDG 10.7), but a
mechanism or a strategy that can contribute to the achievement of many of the goals. If this is to happen,
governments and other actors need to identify the multiple linkages between migration and different goals
and targets, while at the same time also recognising that migrants often are vulnerable and should be given
particular consideration in fulfilment of the general principle of ‘Leaving no one Behind’.
Questions
• Can you share your country and institution experience in developing strategies for the implementation
of the Agenda 2030 on migration to tackle some of the above challenges?
• Can cooperative arrangements among partners ensure that migration policies are protection-
sensitive”, that is, they take into account the needs of all persons who travel as part of mixed
movements, including migrants, asylum-seekers, refugees, victims of trafficking, unaccompanied and
separated children and other groups?
• How can LAC-DAC countries work to ensure that women are able to contribute to the development of
local solutions and opportunities in refugee and migrant communities, and that women and girls are
protected from violence, discrimination and exploitation based on their gender?