GENEVA, Switzerland, Oct 3 (IPS) – On June 14, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) published its flagship annual report, Global Trends: Forced Displacement 2022. It said that by the end of 2022, the number of people displaced by war, persecution, violence and human rights violations had increased significantly by 19.1 million – the largest increase on record – to reach a total of 108.4 million.
This record displacement is mainly the result of the war in Ukraine and the outbreak of conflict in Sudan. Ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Africa’s Sahel region and elsewhere have also contributed, as have significant natural disasters linked to climate change.
Rushing into conflict, delaying finding a solution
In the report, High Commissioner Filippo Grandi was right to blame this tragedy on people who “are far too quick to rush into conflict and far too slow to find solutions”, resulting in “such devastation, a displacement and anguish for each of the millions of people.” of people forcibly uprooted from their homes.
Yet blaming the perpetrators of such conflicts does not absolve the rest of the world of having responded so appallingly to such displacement. This is inevitably irregular or illegal migration. On the day the UN report was published, as many as 600 men, women and children died needlessly when a human smuggler’s boat, Adriana, capsized off the coast of Greece.
The following July, news photographs showed 27 bodies of African migrants as well as dozens of intoxicated figures stranded along the Libyan-Tunisian border. A few weeks later, on August 21, Human Rights Watch reported that border guards of a major Middle Eastern country committed “widespread and systematic” abuses against hundreds of African migrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross its border between March 2022 and June 2023.
This country has rejected this allegation as false. If the evidence proves otherwise, then we might consider this an extreme example of “a kind of dark and tragic monotony”, as the American Quaker humanitarian Louis W. Schneider in 1954 to characterize the world’s aggressive attitude towards unwanted migrants.
Secure borders, secure passages
Perhaps more pernicious, because more subtle and more easily replicated elsewhere, is the growing practice by rich countries of providing training, logistical coordination and other high-tech support to poorer countries so that those countries poorer countries can forcibly prevent migration to rich countries.
Linked to this pernicious support and coordination is the recent migrant boat tragedy off the coast of West Africa, after patrol boats chased a fishing boat carrying migrants. Maneuvering in pitch darkness to escape, the migrant boat got lost and hit rocks off a popular beach in Dakar, Senegal, killing at least 16 people.
There is no doubt that these countries have legitimate, and probably even human, reasons for their vigorous efforts to end this type of irregular and dangerous migration: thousands of young Africans have died over the years trying this route. perilous. And state sovereignty requires secure borders.
Yet it is difficult to shake the impression that stemming flows of illegal migrants is a greater priority than helping desperate young people – often displaced by conflict and ecological disasters – to safer, more accessible destinations. prosperous.
The issue is not just one of moral consideration. This is an extremely complex problem, clearly one of the great global challenges of our unequal world, and a problem with no easy solution. However, the world must find a more humane and effective way to deal with it.
Human migration management
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) was founded in 1951 to “help ensure orderly and humane management of migrationpromote international cooperation on migration issues, contribute to the search for practical solutions to migration problems and provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced persons.
The vision is ennobling and IOM takes its mission seriously. The organization is currently made up of 175 member states, operating in 180 countries around the world (including my own, Sierra Leone). It employs thousands of people from diverse backgrounds to fulfill this mission.
In March this year, as Chairman of the IOM Executive Board, I visited two African countries where IOM has a significant presence. My first stop was Morocco – Rabat and Casablanca – where, over two days in March this year, I met with migrants, IOM staff, senior government officials, diplomats and society organizations civilian working with migrants.
Morocco is a crucial hub for migration – a country of origin, a transit point and, increasingly, a destination country for migrants. It combines border security arrangements with richer northern countries with its own efforts to welcome migrants, although perhaps with an unequal distribution of resources between the two.
Due to Morocco’s strategic location, in 2020 the African Union created the African Migration Observatory (AMO) in Rabat. Led by an Egyptian diplomat, Ambassador Amira Elfadi, the observatory could potentially help monitor events such as the tragedy on the Tunisian-Libyan border. But when I met Ms. Elfadi, she didn’t have any staff yet. The AMO needs support for operations as large and energetic as those in Kenya.
The most effective combination
I had numerous conversations with IOM staff in both countries, during public meetings organized by local IOM leaders. The passion for the work of the organization was very strong. Passion combined with strong technical knowledge and a desire to collaborate with migrant communities and local authorities at all levels – which I found stronger in Kenya – allows for greater effectiveness.
In May, by a resounding vote and unanimous acclamation, IOM elected Amy Pope as its Executive Director. She is a resourceful and energetic American who embodies that combination of passion, knowledge and enthusiasm for engaging with staff at all levels, with all governments and local authorities, as well as with migrant communities.
A seasoned advocate for migrants, Pope is the first woman to lead this important organization since its founding 72 years ago. In her vision statementshe committed to a “people-centered” approach, defining it as a commitment to “migrants, vulnerable people and the communities that IOM serves, IOM Member States and its staff “.
Since becoming Deputy Director of the IOM more than two years ago, Ms. Pope has consistently pursued this vision with rare passion in the quiet corridors of Geneva’s power offices. She is now one of the rare pioneering women to lead important international organizations in Geneva, which hosts a few dozen. All have taken up their positions within the last four years. It was a refreshing change.
Unprecedented leadership of a global organization grappling with a massive global challenge typically raises high expectations. This is both the attraction and the pitfall of progressive change. Regardless, it will not take away from Ms. Pope’s commitment to posit that she will only succeed to the extent that the world wants her to succeed.
Faced with the extraordinarily dark developments that herald his tenure, the world must embrace his “people-centered” approach. Failure to do so could result in endless calamities like those described above.
Dr Lansana Gberie is the Permanent Representative of Sierra Leone in Geneva. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Organization for Migration.
IPS UN Office
