Migration

Refugees make up 9 per cent of the global migrant total; most of these are in developing countries, with only 3 million in developed countries. Utterly important is that refugees right to remain in safety and dignity should have been protected in the first place. According to Goodwin-Gill, the right to remain is conceived as ‘sense of not having to become a refugee, not having to flee, not being displaced by force or want, together with the felt security that comes with being protected’. Protection and security indeed are both future critical issues which need rethinking.

Countries throughout the world have attempted to curb immigration, either in an attempt to bolster their political identity or to reassure their increasingly vocal domestic population that they will not be outnumbered by new immigrants who are increasingly tenacious to seize scarce resources. Voluntary migrants move for economic reasons and are not entitled to humanitarian protection under law. There are of course areas at the ‘migration asylum nexus’ where the two categories overlap, for example persecution of minorities such as the Roma in Eastern Europe has a strong dimension of economic exclusion.

Overall, while migrants do access infrastructure and public services, there are many economic, social, cultural and fiscal benefits for receiving countries. Indeed, the evidence increasingly suggests that migration stimulates the economy, enhances competitiveness and contributes £2.5bn a year net to the UK Treasury (Oxfam, 2003) (1).

In developing countries the impact on the host country also depends on the scale of the migration. A mass influx of refugees to a neighbouring country can have vast economic repercussions for example in labour market by surplus of labour and its effects on lowering wages. It can also have extremely negative development impact as already stretched local resources, including water, land and firewood, are put under extreme pressure, particularly where international humanitarian assistance is not working to full capacity. Over populated developing countries with large families struggling for basic necessities are faced with extreme poverty particularly for lack of job opportunities. This is aggravated in countries Where the society becomes over crowded, resource-demanding, and technologically complex, large families impose loads of problems on the public as well as the environment.

Forced migration


Migration policy can be joined up with asylum, development, humanitarian, trade and foreign policies in order to effectively identifies the root causes of migration, safeguard the legal obligations towards forced migrants to prevent human disasters and turn it to new opportunities for development as well as ensures the equitable migration outcome for the individual, host and sending countries. Migrants, in the most part, move from developing countries due to livelihood insecurities or lack of employment opportunities.

Forced migrants include asylum seekers, refugees and those in need of other forms of international protection from violence, conflict and persecution. They also include internally displaced people, IDPs, who flee for the same reasons as refugees or are affected by natural disaster but do not cross an international border. In recent decade with a change in the nature of the world’s conflicts, there has been an increase in internal displacement. According to the Global Internally Displaced People (IDP) Project, in the first part of 2002, about 25 million people were estimated to be internally displaced, up from an estimated 5 million in the 1970s and outnumbering refugees by two to one. (2)

In terms of forced migration global trends, predictions are hard to make as large outflows are caused by unpredictable large scale conflict or human rights abuses. The numbers of refugees in the world rose from 2.4 million in 1975 to a peak of 18.2 million at the end of the cold war in 1993. By 2000, the numbers had declined to 12.1 million. Political rhetoric also suggests that there is a significant year on year rise in the number of asylum applications made in Europe, however statistics show that there has been an overall decrease in the last ten years and a specific decrease from 1999-2002 of 3.8% (Oxfam, 2003).

Conflict driven migration

Most types of social, political, and economic change involve conflict of some sort, and one could argue that many of the positive changes in world history have occurred as a result of conflict. Violent conflicts emerging since the end of the Cold War have commonly been called ethnic conflict, social conflict, and civil conflict, along with international social conflict where there is some cross-border activity of other states are involved.

Competing identities are often added to the list of root causes, whether conceived in terms of an essentialist ethnicity, or regionalism, or tensions over state formation, or marginality to the global economy (Miall et al. 1999). Traditional cultures and livelihoods in the south have been devastated by modern warfare, conflict induced famine, armed militia groups and proliferation of small arms and light weapons. The abuse and proliferation of small arms is often characteristic of suppression of pressure for democratic change. The threatening use of such arms by security forces, armed groups, or others in positions of authority against political activists, journalists, trade unionists, and peaceful demonstrators has been well-documented for a number of developing countries, as well as for some developed countries.

Taking measures

More recently, with the extension of conflict resolution into post conflict policies, gender issues have come to be seen as far more central, and as directly affecting the efficacy of peace-building initiatives, even if women still remain marginalised at the point of brokering a settlement. There has been a surge of interest in women who have negotiated peace between groups of warring men (Berhane-Selassie 1994; El-Bushra 2000), or who have even courageously intervened in battles to force peace (in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan, for instance). These women have sometimes called on and expressed values, behaviour, and codes which are explicitly associated with their gender. Women less concern with ego involvement have played crucial role in consensus building that needs to be done in forging a peace for people that are being so divided. There are possibilities of introducing new paradigms in conflict resolution, because, women are experienced in conflict resolution and conflict transformation in the domestic sphere, that can be played out into the way public negotiations take place.

Supporting women as groups of individuals (rather than in organisations) is also a common strategy in trying to promote peace building (United Nations 1985, 1995, 1998). A common request from peace activists and commentators is that there should be more of a female presence at the sites of peace making, as well as at discussions that may take place as part of peace building (European Commission 1996b; United Nations 1995). Merely being invited to attend talks or peace conferences is insufficient, however. Very few women have the education, training, or confidence to participate fully, even if they are in attendance. There are lessons here from development policies which have attempted to expand the participation of women in the political process by offering them special training and educational opportunities. Moreover, where peace education is taken seriously as part of the new curriculum, this frees women from what might be seen as a private responsibility (that of educating their children for peace) and makes it a public activity, in which men can also play a part.


Nurturing a human-rights culture and support for human-rights organisations is a common mechanism used in peace building. For example, the Nariobi based New Sudan Council of Churches NSCC that has a deep religious commitment to justice and peace, believes that there is no conflict, whether latent or violent, which is so small that it can be ignored. The people to people peace initiative is a locally owned process based on traditional methods of reconciliation in an environment where formal institutions are non existent. Since the late 1990s locally convened conferences have resolved a series of ethnic and communal conflicts and brought hope and stability to some of the areas most affected by hostilities. Formerly hostile communities have realised that peaceful coexistence promotes the establishment of sustainable livelihoods that create hope for a better future where the economic, political, social and cultural contribution of every citizen is valued and treasured.

Developed countries have undertaken further action in the field by promoting human rights and democracy, as well as stabilization and regional security, using financial incentives. In order to further the aims mentioned above, a number of projects have been initiated, such as the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), the MEDA Democracy Programme (implemented in the framework of EIDHR) for 12 countries in North Africa and the Middle East, or the Cotonou Agreement, pertaining to the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the South Pacific. Separate programmes have been put into operation targeting the Balkans (CARDS Assistance Program to the Western Balkans, involving Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia & Montenegro and Macedonia) and the former Soviet republics (TACIS). Of special importance for Europe, for security reasons, is the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (in view of the large number of Muslim states in geographic proximity to Europe).

The UK and EU governments should do more to reframe their migration policies to integrate social and economic development in migrants’ home countries with entry and integration in host societies. The UK Government should ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families and to take active steps to enforce the protection of these rights. The rights, needs and vulnerabilities of refugee women and girls must be an integral and active consideration in humanitarian assistance and in asylum systems of the UK and other developed countries.





(1) See Sarah Spencer Mousetraps are not enough The Guardian Oct 28th, 2003; Sarah Spencer (ed.)
(2) Internally Displaced People : A global Survey. Norwegian Refugee Council, 2002.


Ref.:

MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT; Oxfam GB Written Submission For The International Development Committee, Nov 2003

Human Development and the Environment, edited by Hans van Ginkel, Brendan Barrett, Julius Court, and Jerry Velasquez; United Nation University Press, 2002

Kropotkin, P., Fields, Factory, and Workshops: Brain work and manual work, (first published 1912), Transaction publishers, UK, 1992

Oxfam, Iansa, Amnesty Intl; Guns or Growth, Control Arms Campaign; Assessing the impact of arms sales on sustainable development, June 2004

Ouko, M., From Warriors to Peace Makers, Oxford University, Refugees Studies Centre, 2005

Pankhurst, D., The ‘sex war’ and other wars: towards a feminist approach to peace Building, Oxfam GB, www.oxfam.org.uk

Stewart, F. and V. Fitzgerald (eds.) War and Underdevelopment, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000

Pankhurst, D. and J. Pearce, ‘Engendering the analysis of conflict: perspectives from the South’, in H. Afshar (ed.) Women and Empowerment, London: Routledge, 2000

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