Pakistan Floods: After the Deluge & the Future of Migration?
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Winter 2010 Pakistan Floods: After the Deluge & The Future of Migration? Winter 2010 ISSN 1813-2855 Editor-In-Chief 3 Editorial Jean-Philippe Chauzy 4 Editors Jemini Pandya 4 Pakistan – After the Deluge Chris Lom Niurka Piñeiro Jared Bloch 8 Mass Communications 8 Layout Programme Talks and Listens to Valerie Hagger Joseph Rafanan Pakistan’s Flood Victims Cover Photo Asim Hafeez/OnAsia 11 Giving Voice to Haiti’s © IOM 2010 - MPK0304 11 Earthquake Victims Migration is published twice a year in English, French and Spanish. All correspondence 14 In Search of Normal: Thoughts and inquiries concerning this publication should be sent to: about Haiti after the Earthquake 14 International Organization for Migration (IOM) PO Box 71 17 Helping the Lost Youth CH Geneva 19 Switzerland of Tanzania Tel.: +41 22 717 91 11 Fax: +41 22 798 61 50 17 E-mail: [email protected] The Silent Plight of Migrant Migration is available online 23 on the IOM website: Farm Workers in South Africa http://www.iom.int IOM is committed to the 25 Tehnology, Vigilance and Sound 25 principle that humane and Judgement – Managing the Dominican orderly migration benefits migrants and society. As Republic’s Borders an intergovernmental organization, IOM acts 28 with its partners in the 28 Biometric Passport and Indentification international community Card: Armenia Enters the Digital Age to: assist in meeting the operational challenges of migration; advance understanding of migration 30 Shedding Light on South-South issues; encourage social Migration to Aid Development and economic development 30 through migration; and uphold the human dignity and well-being of migrants. 2 Migration Winter 2010 Winter 2010 Migration EdItOrIAL Let’s Invest Now for Tomorrow’s Migration By William Lacy Swing, IOM Director General oday, there are an estimated 214 year to strengthen the ability of which have been particularly dented million international migrants States to effectively manage migra- by the current economic downturn. Tin the world. If this number tion. However, responses are often It will also help to lessen political continues to grow at the same pace as short-term, piecemeal and fragmented. pressure on governments to devise during the last 20 years, international The result is a profound effect on short-term responses to migration. migrants could number 405 million by human mobility and economic and 2050. It’s a figure that needs thinking social development, with every To begin with, a rigorous analysis about and planning for. country affected in some way. of the core capacities of countries to manage migration needs to be We - States, business, international There is no getting away from the fact carried out in order to assess their organizations and civil society – all that the labour force in developing effectiveness. This will identify gaps need to make a concerted effort to countries will substantially increase and priorities for the future. invest in migration given its relentless from 2.4 billion in 2005 to 3.6 billion pace. in 2040, accentuating the global The World Migration Report notes mismatch between labour supply and that, for example, by investing in demand. generating better data on irregular migration and labour markets, on This in turn will have an impact on ways to combat migrant smuggling any increase in numbers of irregular and human trafficking and in migrants as legal migration channels improving the ability of transit continue to remain the exception countries to assist irregular migrants, rather than the rule. The growing critical questions such as the numbers of unaccompanied minors, human rights of migrants and their asylum-seekers, victims of trafficking integration into host societies will be and other irregular migrants already easier to tackle. pose a challenge to States and societies struggling to deal with them We lose a historic opportunity to in a humane way. take advantage of this global phenomenon that we know as New migration patterns are also in migration by not putting in place evidence. For example, the emerging policies and adequate resources to economies of Asia, Africa and Latin deal with it, now and in the future. America are becoming ever more But the window of opportunity The 2010 World Migration report, important countries of destination for States to turn the negatives of “The Future of Migration: Building for labour migrants, emphasizing migration into positives is rapidly Capacities for Change” argues that increasing South-South movements shrinking. in a world where demographics, of people. They highlight too the economic needs and the effects of need for those countries to invest in There is no need to reinvent the environmental change are driving migration management programmes wheel on migration or to break the this inexorable rise in numbers of and policies. bank in terms of financial investment. international migrants, there is little Humane and effective solutions choice but to invest adequate financial And let’s not forget the impact of to migration issues are within our and human resources. Getting it right environmental change on migration reach. It’s just a question of partner- means ensuring that the full potential trends in the future. ship and effective resource allocation of migration is reaped in the future. with an eye to addressing the future. Importantly, investing and planning in Let’s base the migration response There is no doubt that hundreds of the future of migration will help im- on facts and not short-term political millions of dollars are spent each prove public perceptions of migrants, opportunism. M 2 Migration Winter 2010 Winter 2010 Migration q A boy carries away USAID-donated blankets and shelter poles from an IOM distribution point in Larkana, west of Sukkur, Sindh. © Asim Hafeez/OnAsia/IOM 2010 - MPK0341 Pakistan – After the Deluge Chris Lom reports from Islamabad mages of desperate families - over 20 million people affected, at says IOM Islamabad-based Regional struggling through flood waters least 12 million made homeless as a Representative for West and Central Ito save their lives and whatever result of 1.9 million houses damaged Asia Hassan Abdel Moneim Mostafa. pitiful possessions they could salvage or destroyed, and countless roads, are fast fading from our TV screens, bridges and other infrastructure swept The international response, while newspapers and the world’s collective away across an area the size of Italy. somewhat muted compared to the consciousness. avalanche of funding pledges gener- But in Pakistan’s densely populated ated by more telegenic, “instant” In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, agricultural heartland, inhabited disasters like the 2010 Haiti Sindh and other provinces where and farmed for over 4,000 years, the earthquake or the 2004 Asian tsunami, millions were forced to flee in August disaster described by UN Secretary was substantial in historical terms and and September by the worst floods in General Ban Ki-moon as “a slow- mobilized relatively quickly. Pakistan’s history, most people have moving tsunami” defies description in now returned to what is left of their simple terms. By early October international donors towns and villages the length and had contributed USD 666 million breadth of the Indus valley. “It systematically destroyed the towards a 12-month multi-sectoral homes, livelihoods and way of life relief and early recovery programme. The statistics provided by Pakistan’s of millions of the country’s poorest But the magnitude of the disaster National Disaster Management citizens, posing a real threat to the dwarfed the sum. It represented just a Authority (NDMA) tell only part of stability of a society already struggling third of the USD 2 billion appealed for the story. They paint a picture of a with a daunting raft of political, in the UN’s September 17th Pakistan disaster unparalleled in modern times economic and security challenges,” Floods Emergency Response Plan. Migration Winter 2010 Winter 2010 Migration IOM, which was asked by the Two months into the disaster, despite “It aims to optimize use of local mate- Government and the UN in August to a massive international effort to buy rials and avoid the “one solution fits all” coordinate the work of the “cluster” of and distribute hundreds of thousands transitional shelter approach of many over 70 agencies providing emergency of plastic sheets, tents, blankets and previous emergencies. But it depends shelter and non-food relief items – a other relief items, over 7 million heavily on accurate assessments of both role that it previously successfully filled homeless and vulnerable Pakistani the needs on the ground, and Pakistan’s after Pakistan’s huge 2005 earthquake flood victims had yet to receive capacity to meet the potentially huge – faced an even greater shortfall in the anything. demand for construction materials. shelter sector. The more we have to import, the more The funding shortfall – unless reversed expensive it will be,” he observes. By early October, the Emergency Shelter by a major donor rethink in the Cluster’s appeal for USD 346 million coming months - will also have serious As damage, needs and market had received just USD 68.7 million or implications for the shelter cluster’s assessments led by Oxfam, the 20 per cent of the amount that cluster government-endorsed strategy for the NDMA, the World Bank and the Asian agencies and the government believed coming year. Development Bank, begin to paint that they would need to provide basic a picture of what will be needed to shelter and