New view of people on the move
The pieces are in place to negotiate a better and more humane framework for human migration, writes Shahidul Haque
We live in a rapidly evolving, hyperconnected world, where goods, capital and people are more mobile than ever. But whereas countries have shown a willingness to co-operate on exchanging goods and capital, the international community has shown little appetite for improving how it governs human mobility. After the wide-scale persecution and displacement of people in the Second World War, world leaders took the bold step of crafting the 1951 Refugee Convention. In doing so, they relinquished a measure of national sovereignty — by accepting the principle of non-refoulement — to promote global solidarity towards refugees. On the other hand, country leaders saw migration as something temporary that could be managed ad hoc, through unilateral or bilateral agreements primarily designed to fill specific labour market needs in developed economies. In hindsight, it is now clear that this approach was inadequate for dealing with the upsurge in human mobility that came with global and regional ...
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