Your Excellency, Mr. HIFIKEPUNYE POHAMBA,

Honourable President of the Republic of Namibia;

Honourable Ministers and Deputy Ministers of Home Affairs and
Interior

from the SADC region;

Heads of Delegations, Distinguished Permanent and Principal
Secretaries; Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps; Invited
Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen; Colleagues and Friends:

INTRODUCTION

It is a great honour to be here in Windhoek, and I am most
grateful for your invitation. 

I am also grateful to the Government and people of Namibia for
the warm hospitality and generosity of spirit that has marked this
momentous occasion — this, the first Ministerial Conference
on the “Migration Dialogue for Southern Africa (MIDSA)”
on the 10th anniversary of MIDSA.

On a personal note, I have a very warm attachment to the SADC
region, having begun my diplomatic career in South Africa in 1963
and having served there later as Ambassador.  If I add to this
eight years in the DRC, I have spent some fifteen years of my
professional life in the SADC region and thirty altogether in this
dynamic continent of Africa.  Therefore, I am delighted to be
back in an area I cherish.     

Above all, I want to thank Minister ROSALIA NGHIDINWA, Namibian
Minister of Home Affairs and Immigration, along with her talented
team, and my own IOM staff based in Pretoria, for their tireless
efforts planning and organizing this event.

I would also like to acknowledge the generous financial support
from the US Department of State’s Bureau of Population,
Refugees and Migration, for which we are grateful. 

The presence here of so many high-level delegations from across
Southern Africa confirms the importance your Governments attach to
migration management. 

It is tacit acknowledgement that migration is among the critical
geo-political issues of our time — destined to be a
“mega-trend” of the 21st Century. 

Governments in Southern Africa — and across the world
— are coming to understand that they cannot address migration
as a national issue, or on their own, that a workable compromise is
best accomplished through dialogue and partnerships between and
among nations of origin, transit and destination.  Hence, the
importance of the MIDSA process and of this ministerial
meeting. 

With that introduction, I have three points that I would like to
make on the theme of this conference: “Migration Management
through Regional Cooperation.”

I. THE GLOBAL MIGRATION CONTEXT

My first point is to say that we live in a world where more
people are on the move than at any other time in recorded history:
214 million international migrants; and 740 million internal
migrants. In other words, a billion people are on the move –
or one in every seven persons on the globe.  These
unprecedented population movements are facilitated by the
information, communications and transport
revolutions.  

The volume of South-South migration is larger than migration
from developing countries to the industrialized OECD
countries.  And to put this into a regional context, we
estimate that here in Southern Africa alone, there are more than
2.2 million international migrants, along in an undefined number of
migrants with an irregular status.  This represents an
estimated annual increase of 7.3 percent since
2005.  

A. Migration Mega-trend

The drivers of the global migration phenomenon are demographic
trends marked by negative population replacement rates in the
industrialized world; resulting labour market demands that cannot
be met by nationals; and a continuous increase in North-South
economic and social disparities, exacerbated by natural and human
disasters – Haiti and Pakistan to name but two – as
well as slow-onset disasters, most notably climate change, which
threatens livelihoods across this region in particular. 

B. The Global Challenge and
Opportunity 

In regards to these large-scale population movements, the
challenge today then is, working together, to find a humane,
orderly and equitable manner in which, on the one hand, to respect
national sovereignty -- the very bedrock of the nation-state; and,
on the other hand, to respect an individual’s right to
migrate – which is, after all, humankind’s oldest
poverty reduction strategy.  

II. MIGRATION DYNAMICS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

My second point is that migration management is best pursued
through dialogue at the regional level through regional
consultative processes, such as MIDSA.  

A. Migration Growth in Southern
Africa 

The delegates at this forum will know better than anyone else
that countries in Southern Africa are affected by migration either
as countries of origin, transit or destination and some as all
three.  

Tackling the shared challenges of human trafficking and
smuggling underscores the need for dialogue and cross-border
coordination; similarly the benefits of human mobility are best
realized through coordinated labour migration schemes and other
migration for development initiatives.

This point is perhaps best illustrated by migrant remittances
— transfers of funds that are nearly three times the total of
all official foreign aid and almost equal to all Foreign Direct
Investment (FDI) flows to developing countries. (And, while FDI
flows declined by 40 percent in 2009, migrant remittances fell only
5.5 percent in the same period.)

B. MIDSA Accomplishments 

The Migration Dialogue for Southern Africa (MIDSA) was founded
in 2000 for the purpose of facilitating informal, non-binding
dialogue among States.   Looking back over the past
decade, we can identify four key contributions of MIDSA to regional
migration management:

1. Best practice: sharing of experience,
   information and good practices — in fields as widely varied
   as migration and health, human trafficking, border management, and
   the facilitated movement of persons. 
2. Reliable data: compilation and exchange of
   migration data — data which has helped States and
   international partners, such as IOM, to enhance their project
   delivery (e.g., migration profiles; the ACP Observatory on
   Migration and Development.) 
3. Capacity building — recommendations
   agreed at MIDSA provide the basis for technical cooperation
   initiatives, border management, and other projects that buttress
   national and regional capacities.  
4. Common approaches: awareness and better
   understanding of the migration phenomenon — for example,
   during the 2003 MIDSA meeting in Lesotho, delegations discussed the
   SADC Protocol on Facilitation of the Movement of Persons, and
   shared views on this important piece of legislation.  It is my
   hope that continued dialogue through the MIDSA and other fora will
   encourage the additional ratifications needed for the protocol to
   enter into force.

And so, over this first decade in the new Millennium, the MIDSA
process has helped the SADC Region in four respects: to identify
best practices; to develop reliable data; to develop greater
capacity and common approaches in managing
migration.   

III. THE FUTURE OF MIDSA

Let me turn now to my third point, the importance of securing
MIDSA’s future through Government-led ownership. 

A. MIDSA Ministerial Meetings

Today’s meeting is the realization and culmination of, a
recommendation made at several earlier meetings to elevate MIDSA
engagements to the Ministerial level, so as to ensure significant
political support.  (The most effective of the RCPs are
distinguished by the regularity of their meetings.  Ideally,
there should be a MIDSA Ministerial meeting every year, or at least
every other year.)   

This is a welcome development; and as we seek a certain degree
of formality, we are ever mindful of the need to sustain the
informal nature of MIDSA ? a MIDSA which promotes open discussion
as well as an action-oriented agenda that goes beyond policy
recommendations to practical results.

On the part of IOM, we wish ultimately to see a government-led
process that is informed by regional development objectives and
priorities — a process in which the role of IOM and other
partners is a supportive one.  At the end of our discussions
here today, I hope that we will emerge with a clear roadmap —
a roadmap that sets out exactly how together, we can accomplish
this objective. 

CONCLUSION

To conclude, let me summarize my remarks:  

One: Faced with inevitable, evolving large-scale migration,
countries must also continue to evolve and expand their capacity to
facilitate human mobility in an orderly and humane
manner. 

Two: Migration management is best pursued through dialogue among
states, making full use of regional consultative processes ---
hence MIDSA’s vital role.   

Three:  Government ownership and preservation of MIDSA’s
flexibility and informality will guarantee the success of this
regional consultative process.    

President Pohamba, Honourable Ministers and distinguished guests,
let me conclude by reaffirming that IOM understands and appreciates
the value of the MIDSA regional consultative process. 

I wish also to assure you that IOM, and I personally, stand
firmly committed and ready to assist and partner with all of you in
your laudable efforts to manage migration in a manner that is
beneficial to countries and migrants alike.