Civil Society Action Committee coordinator Colin Rajah reflects on four years of the Global Compact for Migration implementation, the participation of civil society, and expectations and priorities for the first International Migration Review Forum, which begins on Tuesday, 17 May, at the UN in New York.
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 takes place every four years, and each edition will produce a Progress Declaration.
With just a few days remaining before the first IMRF kicks off in New York, we spoke with Colin Rajah, Coordinator of the Civil Society Action Committee and Civil Society Representative for the Opening Plenary of the IMRF, about civil society reactions to the draft IMRF Progress Declaration, and expectations and priorities for the IMRF.
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Rachel Westerby**: With just a few days left until the IMRF program starts, a full draft of the Progress Declaration is now available. Tell us about the background to drafting the declaration and the reactions of civil society so far.
Colin Rajah: Going into this, civil society expected that things would not be good. The global political environment has been deteriorating over the past two or three years. We’ve had the pandemic and a number of wars, now most recently the war in Ukraine. These factors exacerbated issues around people fleeing for their lives or moving for other urgent or humanitarian reasons. Responses from governments have deteriorated, and that began around the time the GCM was first passed back in 2018.
When the zero draft of the Progress Declaration was released, we had mixed feelings. On the one hand, we were relieved that it wasn’t as bad as we thought it might be. But at the same time, we have to take a step back and compare it to what we were hoping for in 2018. The GCM wasn’t perfect, but it gave us hope and a direction to move forward, something we could build on in the years to come. Four years later, we feel that we are actually regressing.
We then become more disappointed with the language of the next drafts of the declaration, and with how substantive issues were being dealt with. Around the second or third negotiations, Algeria began presenting an extreme position, rejecting many critical items of the draft in a very anti-migrant and anti-rights way. This gave other States, particularly some EU Member States, the U.S., and Australia, the opportunity to press for less ambitious language while appearing reasonable in comparison. Without that position, they would have seemed extreme next to the vast majority of States, including countries of the Caribbean and Latin America, some European countries such as Portugal, Canada, and others negotiating in good faith.
In the final stages of negotiations, we saw countries like the U.S. and Australia, who are ironically not GCM signatories, pushing for the idea that the Progress Declaration must be “inclusive,” meaning that it should appeal to countries that haven’t signed the GCM. That means that the declaration would have to be watered down even further from the GCM language. Words like “commitments” were replaced with “ambitions”. The detention of children was one of the most fought over aspects of the declaration. When an agreement was finally reached, some members of civil society agreed that it was the best language we can get at the moment, but it’s certainly not the best we would have been hoping for looking at it four years ago.
Overall, the Progress Declaration and the negotiations have been indicative of the global political climate. It’s a symptom of a larger issue around global migration policy and governance taking place within the UN framework over the last four years.
Do you think the way in which civil society has been invited to participate in the process mirrors a current global situation?
Absolutely. Back in March, the Civil Society Action Committee wrote an open letter on this issue. The process started earlier this year when the UN Secretary-General released his report on the implementation of the GCM in person in New York. States were there to provide their comments and reactions. Civil society expected to be there along with States, but we were told we were not allowed and could only watch it on UN TV.
Then we were given a blueprint of how the negotiations would go forward: two “town hall meetings” with the co-facilitators, one at the beginning and one at the end of the negotiations. That’s wasn’t sufficient for us. And then, not being able to attend the negotiations in person was the trigger for us to say “enough is enough” and send the letter.
This is part of a general shrinking of civil society space across the UN, which is a very troubling trend. During the UN High-Level Dialogue on migration and development in 2013, civil society self-selected its own speakers, nominated its representatives including its Grand Rapporteur, and even gave feedback on the multi-stakeholder hearing’s program structure. For the IMRF, we could not do any of that.
It is a part of a wider trend that minimizes civil society’s self-organizing and self-determination from UN processes. We could not accept this and pushed the UN to make concessions. And they responded by agreeing to open the negotiations to civil society, double the number of town halls from two to four, and Member States meet with us in a structured way. The Civil Society Action Committee met with the co-facilitators and a few times with likeminded Member States to engage them and give key inputs into the the declaration.
Do you see any parallels between this situation and the history of civil society participation at the Global Forum on Migration & Development (GFMD)? Are there any lessons to be drawn from that experience for the IMRF?
That’s a very good comparison. For those of us who’ve been with the GFMD from the start, it’s really a case of déjà vu! At the beginning conceptualization of the GFMD, only States would meet. We pushed back on that and got one “Civil Society Day” preceding the first GFMD summit. Civil society’s only presence at the Summit was a 10-minute statement delivered at the opening plenary by the States-selected civil society rapporteur. I’ll go as far as to say it’s a kind of neo-colonial mentality: civil society can’t do things for itself, so Member States and the UN must take care of us.
Thanks to civil society’s engagement and pushback, the GFMD has progressively improved over the years. Civil society has finally truly become a full participant in the past two GFMDs. There is now only one session just for heads of government delegations. It’s troubling that it took ten or fifteen years to push governments in that direction. The IMRF works within the UN framework, so we thought it would be more democratic. The GCM document highlights the crucial role of civil society, emphasizes a whole-of-society approach, and identifies different segments of civil society and other stakeholders as key to its implementation. And yet we’re treated as second and third-class citizens.
There are some specific practical points in the open letter about the participation of civil society, such as interpretation and travel assistance, and the impact they can have on the participation of grassroots actors. How much have those concerns been responded to in the IMRF’s planning? Have any significant changes happened as a result of the letter?
There is a major problem with visas. The UN won’t get involved in visa processes, but the IMRF is in New York, so we must deal with extremely restrictive U.S. visas. The waiting time for a U.S. tourist visa is between 600 and 900 days in some countries. We raised this issue more than a year ago, before writing the open letter, and we’ve constantly been talking about it because we knew this would be a problem that needed to be addressed.
This creates a complete imbalance of civil society participation, with most in-person attendees coming from large NGOs that have offices in New York, Geneva, or countries in the global North, and who can easily obtain visas. It does not produce a democratic and broad view of global civil society working on and engaged in migration, as it limits so much of the Global South.
There has been some response – a travel assistance fund was set up, but it came about very late. People were scrambling to use the fund to purchase their plane tickets to apply for their visa. We only have two more days left before the IMRF begins, and people are still waiting for their visas, including some veteran leaders of our civil society movement. Some have been part of this movement and these international discussions for over two decades. It is quite likely that they won’t make it to the IMRF. It is a complete disaster that, for purely technical reasons, we won’t have leaders from our Global South, from migrant organizations who have been at the core of our civil society movement during all of these years.
Tell us about civil society plans and expectations for the IMRF. Given the open letter and the quite fraught circumstances with people still waiting for visas, what expectations do you have for the IMRF?
The expectations are clear. It’s an opportunity for States to come together for the first time in four years, say what they’ve done around migration, congratulate themselves, and say they did a good job in spite of the pandemic. The Progress Declaration notes a lot of that, and several roundtables and the policy debate are being set up for that.
Civil society must come in and say, “actually that’s not reflective of what’s happening on the ground.” Colleague stakeholders from the private sector, local authorities and youth representatives have told me the same. There’s a huge disconnect between discussions surrounding the GCM and IMRF as the primary global framework for governance, and the actual implementation on the ground. So far, it has made little difference in migrants’ lives, and in many cases their situation has gotten worse.
It is not good enough to say that the pandemic disrupted the response for over two years. The pandemic should have been a litmus test for the GCM. The GCM is a multilateral framework. Even though it’s not legally binding, all stakeholders have political and moral obligations to work together to resolve issues when they come up, to better protect and serve migrants. It failed completely because during the pandemic, migrants were scapegoated, migrants were targeted and deported, and migrant workers had their contracts canceled and experienced wage theft. There is a clear indication of where the IMRF will land: but it’s not reflective of reality.
On Sunday, 15 May, civil society has a preparatory day, which will be the first chance to come together at the IMRF and ask, “where have we come from?” We will discuss the gaps between what is being said in the Progress Declaration and what is happening on the ground. Then we’ll strategize about how to raise our collective voice to ensure we do better and maintain the guiding principles of the GCM.
Then we will begin to look beyond this IMRF at what will happen in the next four years. What do we want from the 2026 IMRF? How should it be different from 2022? How can it be more accountable? How can we better implement the core principles and objectives of the GCM? How can we better partner so that States recognize us as real implementation partners? We will use every opportunity we can throughout the week to make ourselves heard, starting with the multi-stakeholder hearing on Monday, and through the plenary and roundtable speaking opportunities.
It seems that positions are quite polarized going into the IMRF. How confident do you feel that civil society’s perspective will be accurately reflected in the declaration and, more generally, across the IMRF?
Some challenges are reflected in the Progress Declaration, but very sparsely. And when we talked with States, they told us they needed to show that the GCM is working to avoid it being dismantled by States that are against it. However, our position is that that’s not good enough because it doesn’t reflect reality.
I don’t expect to see that position reflected throughout the IMRF. A better critique of GCM implementation over the last four years would lead to a better view of how we can go forward, but at the moment, everything seems very busines-as-usual. If we compare current situations of mass displacement, such as in Ukraine, Syria, or Venezuela, the responses have been purely on an ad-hoc basis from country to country. That’s not what the GCM was supposed to offer.
This comprehensive framework should deal with all kinds of situations related to human mobility, including fleeing from wars and fleeing from countries where economies are failing. It was supposed to provide multilateral solutions and cooperative working between States to make these responses possible. It’s not doing that.
Do you think there is a risk of declining civil society engagement in the IMRF if accountability and representation issues aren’t addressed?
Yes and no. We’ve seen civil society pulling out from engaging with the GCM over the last few years, especially during the pandemic. Our global network struggled to engage partners on the ground, particularly community organizations and regional networks. Many of these organizations said it was not a priority and that the GCM had no positive impact on them. That makes sense when you’re under pressure, like during the pandemic, and it’s easy to see why the GCM and the IMRF process have minimal relevance in these contexts. And if things don’t change, we’ll continue to see that trend.
At the same time, there will always be civil society actors ready to engage in policy matters. At least 600 civil society representatives registered to attend the IMRF in person. But are they reflective of the breadth and diversity of civil society working on migration? We need to work to engage migrant organizations and organizations working directly with migrants on the ground. These are crucial partners. Also, the Middle East and North Africa region is very significant in terms of migration, but you can probably count registered participants from that region on one hand. An imbalance is starting to emerge.
Finally, I wanted to ask you about your role as the Civil Society Representative for the Opening Plenary of the IMRF. How did you come to be in the role, what is your remit, and what have you been doing?
I’m one of two stakeholder speakers at the opening plenary. The other, Elana, is the migrant speaker, and we already work very closely together.
The fundamental role is to report on the proceedings of Monday’s multi-stakeholder hearing, which will include two sessions. The first will hear from twelve or thirteen speakers representing different constituencies and stakeholder groups, such as migrants, diaspora, and faith-based organizations. The second session is regional, with reports from four different global regions. All of those are our members as well.
We have called for in the past and continue to insist that there should be more than one rapporteur and that different stakeholder groups deserve different rapporteurs. It’s virtually impossible to represent everything in a five-minute plenary presentation.
My role is broader than just that intervention. My responsibility is to communicate to States how stakeholders feel overall about the process, that we can and need to do better, and bring strong suggestions and recommendations.
*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.
**Rachel Westerby is an independent writer and researcher in migration, refugees and integration.
