Civil society representative Colin Rajah and migrant representative Elana Wong delivered statements at the 19 May opening session of the IMRF, ahead of government discussions on the implementation of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM).
In the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration* (GCM), UN Member States decided that the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) would serve as the primary intergovernmental global platform to discuss and share progress on the implementation of all aspects of the GCM. The IMRF is convened every four years, with the first edition now taking place in New York on 17-20 May 2022. Each IMRF produces a Progress Declaration.
The plenary session of the first IMRF was held on 19-20 May, ahead of the adoption of the first Progress Declaration on Friday, 20 May. The session’s opening segment invited statements from one civil society and one migrant representative, in addition to opening statements by the President of the UN General Assembly, the UN Secretary General and the Coordinator of the UN Network on Migration. Active participation in all subsequent IMRF plenary discussions during 19-20 May was restricted to representatives of Member States.
In his intervention, civil society representative and coordinator of the Civil Society Action Committee Colin Rajah reflected on the difficulties of summarizing the views and perspectives of civil society stakeholders within a single statement. “I get one shot to offer you civil society stakeholders’ views on the Global Compact, once every four years,” he said. “That’s a big task.”
Migrant representative Elana Wong was similarly critical of stakeholder plenary participation, and more broadly of migrant participation throughout the IMRF. “The fact that I am sitting here as the singular migrant voice when migrant spaces this week have been so limited is an injustice,” she said. “Not just to our community and all those who work tirelessly to ensure migrants can lead safe and dignified lives, but to all of us here working together to make the GCM a success.”
“I am just one migrant, one person. I cannot hope to encapsulate the priorities, the challenges, and the needs of migrant women,migrants with disabilities, workers, families, LGBTQI+, the differently abled, entrepreneurs, children, and the multitude of intersectional experiences within our community. I also cannot hope to pass on their expertise to you all today, in just 5 minutes. But you can harness it yourself, by reading collective reports like the 12 Key Ways, through on-ground partnerships, through making space for us,” she said.
Looking back to 2018, when the GCM was adopted, Mr. Rajah described how stakeholders were “full of hope, anticipation and maybe even a little excitement about ushering in this new era in global migration governance.” He urged States to read the forthcoming summary report of inputs of the IMRF multistakeholder hearing prepared by its civil society moderators, which “contains a wealth of invaluable information” for reviewing GCM progress. “We can see pockets of incremental progress, but [they are] few and far between,” he stated. “Good practices were mainly sporadic, ad-hoc, and related to specific circumstances or a country’s needs rather than universally applied. So we have lost a lot of that hope and anticipation we had.”
He offered the global deterioration of the situations of migrants around the world as evidence of governments failing the aspirations of the GCM. “More of us got sick and more of us lost our lives, more of us lost our jobs and experienced wage theft, more of us were detained and deported, more of us have gone missing at borders,” he said. “Many of us were even blamed for the spread of the pandemic, and systemic racism continues to inform migration policies far more than humanitarianism.”
Mr. Rajah described COVID-19 as a “litmus test” for the GCM. “We should have shown how this multilateral framework could in a time of global crisis ensure the protection of the lives, wellbeing, and rights of migrants”, he said, “but instead the opposite happened”. He pointed to particular injustices for migrant workers who were “applauded as first responders and essential workers, but whose labor rights were routinely violated in place of the application of the human rights and international labor standards underlined in the GCM.”
Mr. Rajah recommended the self-organized engagement of all stakeholder groups in the IMRF process. He particularly highlighted the need to make migrants “a fundamental part of the design, implementation and review of the GCM.” His comments were echoed by Ms. Wong, who identified “the development of meaningful benchmarks and measurable indicators for migrant and stakeholder participation” as crucial for the successful implementation and review of the GCM.
Ms. Wong urged that implementation of the GCM be improved by “taking it out of the silo of the migration space.” She recommended that GCM implementation be “moved into discussions around climate, disaster response, economic, social and racial justice, public health, and sustainable development,” with meaningful GCM benchmarks and indicators developed as a matter of urgent priority.
Mr. Rajah concluded his intervention at the IMRF plenary with a renewed civil society commitment to the GCM. “While it would seem that four years into it, we might be failing the ambitions of the GCM, it’s not too late,” he said. “Let’s work together to put aside our differences and the unnecessary rules and procedures, and really get down to work. For the sake of our migrant communities everywhere, we can and must do better.”
*The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is an international agreement adopted by 152 States in December 2018. As the first-ever global framework for migration governance, it aims to increase international collaboration on all aspects related to migration, including human rights, humanitarian needs, and development.
