Your Excellency President Musharraf,

Excellencies,

Distinguished Speakers,

Dear Friends,

I should first of all like to thank the Government and people of
Pakistan for their warm reception and exceptional hospitality. I
should also like to pay tribute to the organizers of this
Conference for their excellent preparations.

It is a great honor for me personally, and for my organization -
the International Organization for Migration - to attend this event
and to have the opportunity to discuss with you, in this
prestigious Islamic capital, the important and complex issues of
migration and labour mobility, issues that have an impact on most
of the themes on the agenda of this Conference..

In the Islamic World and elsewhere, migration and overseas work
have been and continue to be subjects of media interest, of social
preoccupation, and of political controversy. Nevertheless, the tone
of the discourse has changed significantly in recent years and the
level of trust between developed and developing countries is much
higher than just a few years ago.

Migration holds considerable potential for economic growth and
social development. There is nevertheless much distance to be
covered before agreement can be reached on management strategies,
whether at international, regional or national level, for that
promise to be realized.

Is there a point of leverage to move the debate forward so that
a workable global approach to the management of international
migration can be put in place with reasonable chances of
success?

Part of the problem lies in the difficulty to reach a consensus
about the nature of migration and its outcomes. Underlying the
current and welcome inclination to acknowledge the potentially
beneficial outcomes of migratory phenomena there is a discourse
that is still laden with doubt, with inconsistencies and outright
contradictions.

Despite such disputes, it is true that the formal or organized
aspects of globalization have focused on the elaboration of
juridical and administrative mechanisms to facilitate, to the
broadest degree possible, the movement of capital, goods and
services, not people. But these developments are also largely
responsible for the creation of an unprecedented context in which
human mobility seeks to find expression on a genuinely global
scale.

According to the most recent estimates, there are some 200
million migrants and foreign workers, permanent and temporary,
around the world, nearly two and a half times the count in 1965, a
pace of increase that is well in excess of the global population
rate over the same period. What is even more striking, however, is
the widely dispersed origin and distribution of those migrants
today: the patterns of movement are such that almost every country
in the world is simultaneously, albeit to varying extents, a
country of origin, of transit and of destination. At the same time
there is an increasing diversity of migration management systems,
ranging across short-term relocation, longer-term temporary
assignments such as in the Gulf region, permanent migration and
even multi-stage migration itineraries back to the point of
origin.

A global life context where migration is viewed increasingly a)
at the individual level as a choice worth including in life plans
(keeping in mind that 97% of the world’s population
consistently opts not to migrate); and b) at the corporate level as
a significant factor to be taken into account in economic and
business planning, whether by government or the private sector.

To sum up, globalization creates almost unlimited awareness of
opportunities and networking possibilities in a context where job
market openings are multiplied. At the same time, globalization
gives rise to powerful socio-economic dynamics that play across
borders: population imbalances, labour market discrepancies and
income disparities combine to produce migratory flows that are
increasingly dominated by the search for employment.

Powerful labor market dynamics now help ensure that patterns of
labour supply and demand operate across international borders:

• There is, first of all, the constant search for productivity
  and improved outputs, and the place of migrant labour in the
  complex equations that are meant to yield the best business
  outcomes.
  
  
  
• Another significant factor is the growing need for human
  services, especially in developed economies, where ageing
  populations require continuous personal assistance and affluent
  working age parents can afford to pay for child care and general
  household help.
  
  
  
• Account must be taken of the increasing scarcity of workers
  willing to engage in low- or middle-skilled employment in
  industrialized economies, not only in the care sector but in
  agriculture, construction, hospitality as well as other employment
  sectors.

What are the major policy issues and challenges?

The largest and most sensitive subject by far, and of immediate
concern to both countries of origin and destination, is that of the
status of foreign workers. The issue to be addressed extends well
beyond the unquestionably important formulation and implementation
of minimum standards of protection. The difficult challenge here is
to have a policy regime that allows that competitive edge of the
foreign workers to be put to advantage, that enables the
realization of these assets, while precluding their
"commodification".

Closely related to the above question are matters pertaining to
the management of the interface between permanent migrants and the
host community. Policy issues such as assimilation, integration (or
segregation), dialogue between religions, multiculturalism and the
delicate question of entitlements to social benefits and services
need to be revisited in the light of evolving migratory
circumstances.

 

A third large cluster of issues revolves around the complex
relationship that exists between migration, overseas employment and
development. The increasingly significant contribution of overseas
labor to the global economy has been very thoroughly researched and
analyzed, with one of the major topics of interest being the
substantial contribution of remittances to the development of
countries of origin. In 2006, recorded remittance flows were
estimated to have exceeded USD 260 billion worldwide (in nominal
terms a staggering 100% increase over what they were 5 years ago),
with USD 199 billion going to developing countries. Of the more
than $14 billion remitted from Saudi Arabia in 2006, up to 70 % of
the money was remitted to families in South Asia and the
Philippines.

Three major policy formulation questions remain:

• What can be done to lower the transfer costs of
  remittances?
  
  
  
• What conditions ought to be created to encourage the
  application of remittances to sustainable development
  endeavours?
  
  
  
• What strategies are needed to ensure labour migration does not
  lead to the depletion of the skill base in developing countries of
  origin?

These questions carry additional significance because recent
experience has shown that they represent a unique meeting platform
where countries of origin, transit and destination can work
together towards common objectives. This is no doubt one important
reason underlying the success of the many regional consultative
processes on migration that have emerged in recent years, such as
the Colombo process in Asia, a dialogue among 11 Asian sending
countries and one that now extends also to receiving countries,
among which the Gulf States. There are many other regional
consultative processes, like the Puebla Process in North America
and the 5+5 in the Western Mediterranean, where North African
governments meet regularly with South European states to discuss
common migration issues.

A fourth major challenge lies in the requirement to find
effective responses to irregular migration. The problem exists
worldwide. According to one UN estimate, the irregular migrant
contingent may constitute between 15 and 20 percent of the total
migrant population. Given that the vast majority of irregular
migrants either enter countries through unofficial channels and
take up unauthorized residence and employment or lapse into
clandestinity after regular entry, this is a figure that is
impossible to verify on the strength of currently available
official data. What is certain, on the other hand, is the
vulnerability of irregular migrant workers to exploitation,
victimization and abuse and the additional burden they impose on
the countries in which they are living.

All of these challenges in the field of labour mobility are
being tackled ad hoc by the international community, but the need
remains for a broad and coherent global strategy to better match
demand with supply in safe, humane and orderly ways. IOM is working
hard with our partner governments, many of them in this room, to
forge better answers for the twenty-first century.

Thank you very much.