International cooperation in managing international migration

This section discusses recent efforts to increase international cooperation in managing movements of people, culminating in the adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.

Although States retain the principal responsibility for decisions regarding migration, there has been growing recognition, reflected in the Global Compact, that no one State acting unilaterally is able fully to manage international migration. Unilateral policies tend to ignore the interests of other actors and often lead to short-sighted responses. Much progress has been made in the past two decades towards establishing the international norms, rules and decision-making processes for managing migration in a collaborative way. Yet, in comparison to other transnational issues, such as the global movement of goods and capital, much more is needed to ensure full international cooperation.

A number of factors have impeded progress in establishing a more coherent system of global migration governance (Martin & Weerasinghe, 2017):

• The first is concern about sovereignty. Migration affects sovereignty directly by its impact on border protection, economic growth, social cohesion, population, cultural and religious values, and, ultimately the meaning of citizenship. These impacts are felt by countries of destination, origin and transit alike.
• Second, migration is often a contested issue in domestic politics. Although it tends not to be a first-order issue, migration has had profound impact on election outcomes when the public fears its impact in combination with others, such as economic, social or cultural change.
• Relatedly, States are often conflicted about their own interests with regard to migration, making it difficult for them to engage constructively with others in international forums.
• Fourth, there is a natural asymmetry in the power of destination countries, which tend to be global or regional hegemons that are able to use their sovereign right to decide who can enter and stay, and countries of origin, which are usually poorer and less powerful (Khadria, 2009). This is equally true for South–South and South–North migration.

At the heart of the matter, however, finding common ground on migration is difficult because it is fundamentally about people, in contrast to the global regimes to address movement of capital and goods. As Martin and Weerasinghe (2017) note in their contribution to the World Migration Report 2018: “For the system of global migration governance to benefit States, migrants and societies, the very people to be regulated have to be engaged in developing and improving relevant frameworks, institutions and processes. However, incorporating migrants into such a system is exceedingly difficult, particularly since it is not always clear who can represent migrants’ interests in any given context.”

International cooperation has three principal mechanisms.

• First are the legal norms and principles that govern how States will address the issue.
• Second are mechanisms for facilitating inter-State consultation, cooperation and, ultimately, decision-making.
• Third is the strengthening of international organizations to assist States and other interested actors in fulfilling the agreed upon aims in accord with the adopted norms and principles.

During the past 30 years, there has been significant progress in strengthening international cooperation in each of these areas.

With regard to the first, for example, States have adopted legally-binding conventions touching upon the rights of all persons, including migrants , as well as protocols on trafficking in persons (United Nations, 2000b), and human smuggling (United Nations, 2000a). The 1951 Refugee Convention and its Protocol, adopted well before these instruments, has been interpreted during this period to provide protection to a broader range of persons, including those facing gender-based persecution. As discussed in Chapter International policy dialogue and consultation processes on migration, States have also promulgated non-binding principles and recommended practices in such areas as development (Sustainable Development Goals, 2015), protection of persons displaced by natural disasters and the effects of climate change (Nansen Initiative, 2015) and migrants in countries experiencing crises (MICIC Initiative, 2016).

With regard to mechanisms to facilitate inter-State cooperation, which are elaborated in more detail in chapter Global Initiatives on Migration, these occur both within the United Nations and in State-led processes at both the regional and global levels. Most recently, the UN Meeting on Large-Scale Movements of Refugees and Migrants, which resulted in the resulting New York Declaration, paved the way for the Marrakesh Summit at which the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was adopted. The first comprehensive UN framework adopted through inter-governmental negotiations to enhance international cooperation in global migration governance, the compact offers an aspirational approach by articulating a vision for what the international community expects migration policy and practice to be in the future.  It respects the sovereign right of states to decide who can enter and stay and under what conditions; it is people-centred, putting migrants at its core and respecting the human rights of all migrants; and it was developed with the effective participation of all relevant stakeholders including diaspora and migrant organizations. Under the terms of the compact, the High Level Dialogue will become the International Migration Review Forum, meeting every four years to assess implementation of the compact, while the GFMD and regional consultative mechanisms are invited to provide platforms to exchange experiences and share practices and information exchange to report to the IMRF. (See para 47 and 51 of the GCM).

The third component of international cooperation are the institutions that facilitate collaboration, consensus-building and implementation of agreed upon actions, discussed in greater detail in chapter Actors and Partnerships for migration. Until 2016, there was no UN agency whose sole mandate pertained to migrants who were not refugees although a number of agencies touch on migration issues. In that year, IOM joined the UN system. Further change occurred in 2018, when the UN Secretary-General created the UN Network on Migration, a successor to the Global Migration Group, to “place emphasis on those issues where a common UN system approach would add value and from which results and impact can be readily gauged. (United Nations, 2018).” IOM serves as the Coordinator and Secretariat of all constituent parts of the Network.