Madam Chair,

Excellencies,

Distinguished Delegates,

Ladies and Gentlemen;

Introduction:

It is an honor to participate in the 17th Economic and Environmental Forum of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

It is also a distinct privilege to be here in Athens, Greece – a country that throughout human history has been a cross roads for migration. It is no surprise then that Greece in 1951, was among the founding members of the International Organization for Migration – or that Greece has hosted an IOM office since then. I would therefore like to thank the Greek Chair for Greece's unfailing support of IOM over the years, and for giving me this splendid opportunity afforded me of being here today.

"Migration management and its linkages with economic, social and environmental policies" is our theme for these three days, and in deciding to make this our theme, the Greek Chair made a courageous choice. I say this because there are few contemporary issues that stimulate as much passionate debate, nationally and internationally, as migration.

In recent years, the International Community has come to recognize and ultimately accept that migration is a potentially beneficial feature of our modern world. Migration, when responsibly managed, can be an important element, even catalyst, in economic and social development.

The OSCE region is home to more than 90 million migrants – almost half of the total number of migrants world-wide; from Vladivostok to Vancouver the OSCE region is an origin, transit, and destination place for migrants. This in my view is the OSCE region's strength in addressing migration management in a comprehensive manner.

Far too little attention has been paid to migrants' contribution to economic development. The globalization thinkers of our time focus on the free flow of capital, goods and services, but rarely, it seems, the free flow of people, the globalization era's most essential element. It is, therefore, timely and laudable that the Greek Chair of this year's Economic and Environmental Forum has chosen to highlight the link between migration and security. Madame Minister, the 3rd Global Forum on Migration and Development, which your Government will proudly host in November, will be a further occasion to pursue and promote this new, broader outlook.

With this introduction, I would like to address three key points today:

I. Migration: from Threat to Opportunity

First, migration in the OSCE region and beyond is an inevitable element in the life of Nation States and how we manage migration and migrants will determine whether the impact will be beneficial or not. As such, migration should be viewed as an opportunity and not simply a challenge or threat.

While the communications revolution may have launched today's movement of people, it is current demographic and economic trends that will insure a continuing flow of people across borders in an ever more complex migration picture:

• Demographically, most industrialized nations are characterized by aging populations and dramatically declining birthrates, amounting to longer-term negative population growth – and a labour market constantly in deficit.
• Combine this with the persistent North-South economic divide – which the global financial crisis will only make worse – and the result is a North increasingly in need of labour – and a South with more and more excess labour – most of which South-South migration will not be able to absorb (even though South-South migration is almost as large as South-North migration) as rich nations become less rich, so too will poor countries become poorer.

Migration is thus a major reality in our lives. The basic factors driving migration – demographics and economics – can be expected to grow in their complexity and are unlikely to ebb. The migration challenge therefore demands responsible policy decisions, on the part of us all – namely – how can we, working closely together, as partners, manage migration in a manner that best serves the national interests of host and home country and the migrants themselves?

I am convinced that our deliberations at this Conference will help provide some of the answers we urgently need – answers for a world in which migration is overwhelmingly about labor mobility in response to the growing labour demands of ageing, more affluent societies. According to IOM's 2008 World Migration Report, nearly all migration today is related, in some manner, or another, to labor. That migrants filled nearly two-thirds of all new jobs in European OECD countries in the period 1995-2003 underscores this point.

A key element in migration management is a greater focus on migrants' social and economic contribution to host countries – at the same time one stems the flow of irregular migrants (who make their contributions as well).

Irregular migration in its most corrosive forms – human smuggling and trafficking – is intrinsically linked to transnational organized crime. Moreover, irregular migration fuels informal economies, human rights abuses, can undermine social cohesion, and too often results in policies of discrimination and xenophobia against migrants.

The OSCE has already accumulated much experience promoting tolerance and addressing discrimination. The continued challenge will be to reduce irregular migration without stifling legitimate and needed movements, and without imposing serious constraints on personal rights and liberties of migrants. Our challenge is to strike a balance between facilitating legal migration, on the one hand, while stemming irregular migration, on the other hand – all the while ensuring protection of the human rights of both, irrespective of their status.

For its part, IOM stands ready to assist the OSCE and its Member States – many of whom we count among IOM members – to develop migration profiles to generate an accurate account of migration. One such example of our work is the development of migration profiles in the context of the Black Sea Consultative Process on Migration Management. These migration profiles are helping to promote better understanding of migration dynamics at the regional level.

II: The Global Economic Crisis and Migration

My second point is that times of crisis demand greater solidarity between source and destination countries. Migrants are part of the solution, not the problem, in overcoming the current global recession.

Many of the high-income countries in the OSCE region have been affected seriously by the economic and financial crisis. Labour markets have been hard hit, with mass layoffs in construction and textile industries – traditional employers of migrants.

Migration corridors are also affected. We are seeing substantial declines in remittances – forecast by the World Bank to fall as much as nine percent in 2009 – a prediction that does not bode well for developing countries in the OSCE region where remittances constitute a substantial share of GDP. To put this in perspective, I would recall that, globally, migrants' annual remittances of some $300 billion are twice as large as Official Development Aid (ODA) and nearly two-thirds that of total Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in developing countries. If constituted as GDP, global migration remittances would exceed the GDP of a number of individual OSCE Member States.

Given the serious impact of the current recession on poor countries World Bank President, Robert B. Zoellick has called on developed countries to dedicate 0.7% of their economic stimulus packages to a "Vulnerability Fund" for those developing countries hardest hit by the global economic recession.

In reaction to the global economic and financial crisis, some Governments are inclined to think about migration in counter-cyclical terms. That is to say, the tendency is to harden attitudes towards migrants and send them home – whereas those same migrants will be needed if our economies are to recover.

The serious world situation notwithstanding, structural fundamentals, including demographic and economic disparities, remain unchanged, and in their wake, produce labour market disparities. Faced with these realities countries of origin and countries of destination will increasingly find it in their interest to work together to arrive at a common solution. We must all work together to maintain and strengthen the consensus necessary to harness the benefits of migration for security and development. This is one of the lessons-learnt from the 1973 oil crisis and 1997 Asian financial crisis – the importance of keeping markets open to migrants at all skill levels in order to stimulate economic recovery.

III. Climate Change Impacts on Human Mobility

The financial crisis is, however, not the only global challenge that we face.

A World Bank official, Richard Newfarmer, has reminded us that the combination of the recession and climate change could produce an unprecedented decline in food production and, in turn, significant pressures on migration.

In this regard, it was observed, for example, that African agricultural production could be reduced as much as 30 percent as droughts and floods become more common.

In Bangladesh, for example, food harvests would suffer a 25 percent loss as only a 1.5 meter sea level rise inundates 15 percent of total land surface.

Finally, melting glaciers in the Himalayas and Andes could seriously affect availability and reliability of water needed to grow food for increasing populations.

This brings me to my third point, namely, that climate change poses a serious challenge to population movements. If well-managed, however, migration is likely to form part of a comprehensive adaptation strategy on climate change.

We do not yet have reliable data on the numbers of persons displaced by climate change, but we do have migration management tools that can be configured to benefit countries of origin and destination and migrants themselves. For example, one immediate, short-term measure could be a circular labour migration scheme to assist populations vulnerable to environmental degradation. A longer-term approach may require integration models such as we are seeing in Japan and other Asian countries.

Clearly, more research is needed to examine the links between environmental, social and political crises in order to be prepared in the future. This is the thinking that went into the OSCE, IOM and United Nations University (UNU) contribution to the EU sponsored two-year research programme on Environmental Change and Forced Migration Scenarios (EACH-FOR).

Conclusion: IOM – OSCE Cooperation

In closing, I would like to conclude my remarks by emphasizing the value that IOM attaches to cooperation and partnership.

I am delighted that OSCE and IOM have a Memorandum of Understanding signed 8 years ago in 2001 by my predecessor, Mr. Brunson McKinley, and with Mr. Ján Kubiš, former OSCE Secretary-General.

Our two organizations have established a "practical, pragmatic and result-oriented close cooperation" . OSCE-IOM cooperation is based on a shared belief that managing the mobility of people in the region in a humane and orderly way is an essential component of the integration, stability, security and development of the OSCE region.

Genuine partnership is fundamental to achieving our goal of developing comprehensive, fair, flexible and effective migration management systems – systems that contribute to the well-being and prosperity of people and societies.

Partnerships are the basis for reaping the benefits of migration and for mitigating the impact of the current financial crisis and of global climate change.

Our goal at IOM is to help governments to develop such systems. You have my commitment that IOM will continue to work closely with the OSCE and its Member States. Together we can manage the migration process to the benefit of stability and security in the OSCE region.