International Migrants Day

A message from William Lacy Swing, Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM)

migrant-couple18 December: International Migrants Day – A report arriving on my desk twice weekly tells a tragic story. It details the number of migrants who have died.  They die when the vessels smugglers cram them into sink, they die of exhaustion crossing deserts, or much worse they die when those holding them captive – in places like Libya – take everything they and their families can give, only to murder and bury the migrants in mass graves.

Sometimes they die far from their families. Sometimes their families are with them, or close behind. We have had 65 years of getting to know about migrants at IOM. And we know that, wherever migrants die during dangerous journeys, many could have avoided their fate had they had information about the risks ahead or opportunities for a better life closer to home.

Extreme poverty, climate change, broken and corrupt economies put millions of men, women and children at risk and on the move.  Add to that the eight full-scale conflicts happening in various parts of the world which displace people inside and outside their countries’ borders (…)

 

As of today, over 7,000 people already have lost their lives along all these routes in 2016. And these are only the fatalities that we know about. Many more deaths go unrecorded by any official government or humanitarian aid agency.

We need to take a hard look at this shocking death toll and the cold shoulder which the world increasingly turns towards them. This is happening today, to families, many of whom are now following paths identical to the ones our own parents and grandparents took, decades ago.

There is no longer any point in expressing sorrow, or horror, or guilty feelings. We must recognize migration is the mega-trend of our time. It’s a mega-trend which has pushed migration into the public’s consciousness and to the top of every government’s agenda.

Despite appearances and media spin, migration doesn’t have to be chaotic or seem like an invasion.  It is not a looming disease, set to contaminate our culture.

iom-oimThe upheaval we see all around in our politics should serve as a wake-up call to prepare rather than panic. We need to mould the future rather than ignore it. We should do this by embracing the inevitability of migration, changing the perceptions of migrants among our publics and better integrating migrants in our societies

There is a real demographic revolution going on today and it is up to us to manage it for the benefit of all. Most migrants simply want an opportunity and would welcome even a temporary one—say, a short-term student or agricultural work visa — to improve the lives of their families back home.

With the right support, those that stay will contribute to whatever society they settle in, whether it is economically or culturally. It is important that partnerships are built between migrants, host communities and governments to nurture the benefits of their presence in the country.

On December 18th, International Migrants Day, let us recognize, that we have enough opportunity for all – we need only to share it.