Financial crisis taking toll on world migrants: UN chief
Agence France-Presse | 10/29/2008 2:04 PM
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The financial crisis that has battered most industrialized countries is taking a heavy toll on the world's millions of migrants, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday.
And if governments failed to protect the rights of some 200 million migrants who send precious remittances to their homes countries, the world would be in a more precarious condition, Ban said.
"Today, we face a cascade of national financial crises throughout the world. None of our economies are insulated," Ban told the Global Forum on Migration and Development in Manila.
He said global growth was slowing, leading to an increase in personal hardship and anxiety with many countries slipping into recession.
"Given these developments, it would be naive to think the current crisis will have no effect on the movement of people across borders, and on how publics perceive migration and the migrants in their midst," he said.
He said there had been "mounting evidence" of a significant slowdown in remittance flows, while immigration has also increasingly become a political issue in many countries "heightening the risk of discrimination."
"Already migration flows are reversing. In several instances, we are seeing a net outflow from countries facing economic crises," Ban said, noting that sectors such as construction and tourism have been badly hit.
But instead of imposing measures to curtail migration, governments must intensify cooperation across borders, Ban said.
Constraining legal migration could increase the number of illegal migrants, he warned.
"Migration will flow through unsafe and irregular channels. This will undermine confidence in our ability to govern -- confidence that has already been damaged by the financial crisis," Ban said.
William Lacy Swing, the director general of the International Labor Organization, told the Forum that migration was not an obstacle to development, but it was not "a magic wand to achievement."
"We must work towards policies that are carefully shaped to boost the positive potential of migration for development, while reducing negative repercussions," Lacy said.
He said there was a real need to help boost governments' capacities to manage migration, ensuring that workers are safe and their rights protected.
"Today, as in previous periods of economic downturn, there is a risk that migrants will be singled out and stigmatized," Lacy said.
"We need to make a concerted effort to prevent this and to ensure that public perceptions of migrants are fair and balanced," he said.
