People on the move globally
THE MASS MOVEMENT OF PEOPLE IS THE BIGGEST STORY OF OUR TIME
The mass movement of people is the biggest story of our time |
Migrants, expats, asylum seekers, refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) — what are the differences?
These are loaded words because they often suggest a backstory or motive that may be inaccurate.
According to the 1951 United Nations refugee convention, the difference between refugees and asylum seekers is clear. An asylum seeker has left his or her country and is seeking protection from persecution. A refugee has already received such protection.
Refugees have the right to international protection while seeking asylum is a human right, which means everyone should be allowed to enter another country to seek asylum. IDPs are essentially on the run in their own country: Putative refugees who have not been able or willing to cross an international border.
When it comes to migrants, definitions are far woollier. Some presume a migrant is on the move to seek a better life. But if that person is leaving the penury and starvation of a dustbowl farm in order to survive, is he or she a migrant or a refugee?
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) therefore defines a migrant as any person who is moving or has moved across an international border or within a state regardless of legal status,
whether the movement is voluntary or involuntary, what the causes for the movement are, and what the length of the stay is.
Expatriate is a weakly defined term that essentially means anyone living outside one’s native country.
Record-keeping
Many refugees slip through the gaps when attempts at record-keeping take place. For example, official figures usually exclude Palestinian refugees because they don’t fall into the specific mandate of UN refugees.
A separate agreement was reached on their behalf when the 1951 refugee convention was drawn up, specifically to try to avoid what has nevertheless come to pass: A permanent acceptance of their displacement.
The number of Palestinian refugees varies depending on the source, but there are reckoned to be between 5.3 million and 6.5 million — around one in three of all refugees worldwide. The United States last month announced it was cutting all funding to the main Palestinian refugee programme.
How long do people remain refugees and IDPs?
Not only are the numbers of refugees and migrants underestimated, but so too is the chronic length of time that refugees remain displaced in camps and so-called “temporary” situations.
There are still Palestinian refugees forced from their country in 1948, living in camps in Syria; Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees who have been living in camps in Sudan since the mid-1960s; Afghan refugees who have been in camps in Pakistan since the Soviet invasion in 1979. The list goes on.
Moreover, many of the countries from which large numbers of people are forced to flee conflict — such as Syria, South Sudan, Iraq and Yemen — are also host to very large internally displaced populations.
“Politically, Europe had a panic in 2015 and 2016 about the scale of movement of people to a whole continent, and [in] particular, to rich ones,” said Steve Valdez-Symonds, the director of refugee and migrants rights at Amnesty.
“But that scale of movement doesn’t far exceed what has even more recently happened across the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, or in Venezuela, where large numbers of people are moving to Ecuador, Peru,
Colombia and other countries in that region.”
What about the political response?
Migration is arguably politically less acceptable than at any point since the end of the Second World War. The antiimmigration response of governments across Europe, and in America and Australia, has sent quite clear signs to some of those frontline countries that they can build walls and force back those seeking safe havens.
“The last few years have seen quite threatening movements by countries that had offered refugees a relative degree of safety,” said Valdez-Symonds. “Of Kenya towards its refugee Somali populations, for example.”
There is an additional complication involving those fleeing environmental disasters, such as flooding or desertification. The 1951 convention doesn’t define these people as refugees but, as Bill Frelick, Human Rights Watch’s refugee rights programme director, says: “If someone’s life is in danger, it really shouldn’t matter if it’s because of a gun or a landslide or earthquake.”
Are any countries holding their heads up in this maelstrom?
Sadly, experts say there are none.
“I don’t know that anyone has it right,” said Valdez-Symonds.
“Canada has a very large and, in many ways, a very good resettlement programme for refugees. However, for those who seek asylum across Canada’s borders, its response to those people is not all that good: It has major issues of long-term use of detention centres for those crossing its borders.”
Frelick said: “I don’t know of any country I can point to and say: ‘This place has got it right.’ You can say some aspects are far better than other places. The UK can probably still hold itself up as a comparatively better place for resettlement than many others.”
“But our response to asylum seekers is not especially healthy and our response has generally deteriorated over time,” he added.
What next?
The UN is to formally agree to a new global compact on migration in Marrakech this December, following 18 months of negotiations.
Protagonists say the agreement promises a better, more coordinated approach to migration, though efforts have been damaged by the US pulling out of the talks halfway through.