Kathrine Garrison is the Program and Advocacy Associate at MCC’s UN Office in New York. Her work at the MCC UN Office centers on migration, food security, and the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. This article was first published on the MCC Ottawa Office Notebook.
In recent years, the emerging crises of unprecedented migrant flows into Europe brought migration to the forefront of international policy discourse. These discussions culminated in a United Nations (UN) summit that assembled its 193 member states at its New York headquarters in September 2016. At this time, leaders from around the globe came together to agree upon a powerful outcome document, known as the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants.
This document expressed the political will and commitment of the international community to protect the lives and human rights of all refugees and migrants, as well as to address the imperative for a shared responsibility in facing future migration challenges. In addition, this declaration demonstrated that migration now holds a place as a significant issue of focus within the international agenda.
One of the specific plans of action outlined in the New York Declaration was the start of intergovernmental consultations and negotiations aimed at establishing a comprehensive framework promoting safe, orderly, and regular migration. The process began in early 2017 and will culminate in a United Nations conference on international migration in late 2018, during which the General Assembly will adopt what has been termed the Global Compact for Migration.
This time of consultation and negotiation, leading up to the General Assembly adoption of a Global Compact for Migration, presents a powerful opportunity to improve the global governance on migration, to address the challenges of migration, and to enhance the ways in which migration can actually contribute to the UN agenda of sustainable development.
Acknowledging that Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) works with a great number and diverse spectrum of migrant populations around the world, the MCC UN Office decided to actively engage in the consultation, stocktaking, and negotiation processes, with the intent to ensure that migrant voices effectively reach the ears of those who will ultimately draft and adopt the formalized framework.
We delivered official statements at high-level meetings such as those deciding upon the methods and procedures for the negotiation process itself, and stressed the necessity of including civil society voices throughout the entirety of the proceedings. We attended countless meetings to monitor the consultations and remain attuned to the topics of focus along with taking note of those being overlooked. We met with Louise Arbour of Canada, the Special Representative of the Secretary General on International Migration, and with Swiss Ambassador Jürg Lauber, one of the official co-facilitators for the Global Compact for Migration process.
Yet, it remains crucial to note that these advocacy endeavors are conducted not alone but in collaboration and partnership with a multitude of other civil society representatives, primarily through a coalition called the NGO Committee on Migration.
This coalition worked together to draft a vision for what it termed the UN Global Compact on Human Mobility and Migration, a set of ten acts that civil society believes are essential to a meaningful Global Compact. Read the entirety of “Now and How: Ten Acts for the Global Compact” here. This document represents civil society’s attempt to reframe the conversation on migration to emphasize human dignity, full participation in discussion and solutions (especially honoring the multiplicity of migrant voices), development for all, and a commitment to implementing both existing international human rights law and labor conventions and protocols and the actions outlined in the Global Compact for Human Mobility and Migration.
As the UN body works to compose a draft of the Global Compact for migration in the upcoming months, the MCC UN Office plans on participating, with the NGO Committee on Migration, in meetings with representatives from UN member states to present the “Now and How” document and advocate for the inclusion of its contents in the official Global Compact.
Former MVS intern Emma Cabana delivering a statement on behalf of the MCC UN Office at the Informal Briefing by Civil Society on the Modalities for the Global Compact for Migration.
You can also help advance these advocacy efforts! The NGO Committee on Migration aspires to secure at least 1,000 organizational endorsements on the “Now and How” document by the end of November 2017. Therefore, we encourage you to share this opportunity for endorsement with other NGOs and ask them to sign on here to show support for its vision. In addition, at an individual level, we encourage you to utilize the attached template to send a letter to your parliamentarians or other government representatives, asking them to enter into a discussion about practical solutions to facilitate safe, orderly and regular migration.
Letter_template_for_national_advocacy_TEN_ACTS_2017_2018_0
As stated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Director General William Lacy Swing, “The Global Compact is a historic opportunity to achieve a world in which migrants move as a matter of genuine choice. It’s time for the international community to come together to more responsibly and humanely manage the movement of people.”
Just as we are called on a personal level to welcome the stranger in Matthew 25:35 and to “love the alien” as ourselves in Leviticus 19:33-34, so too are we called on a collective level to strive to create more just structures and international policy to address the matters of migration.
Now is the time for a transformative agenda for human mobility, migration, and development. Let’s make it happen.