October 11, 2005 — Mamphela Ramphele and Jan Karlsson, co-chairs of the Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM), presented their report at a panel discussion at the Bank last Thursday, calling for a more coordinated approach to migration, "based on shared objectives and a common vision."
Ramphele, a former Managing Director of the Bank, told Bank staff, diplomats, U.S. officials and migration experts in the Preston auditorium, that migration has enormous implications for growth and welfare in both origin and destination countries.
The Commission's report says the number of international migrants has increased from 75 to some 200 million in the past 30 years, and continues to grow. Workers' remittances have doubled in the last decade, reaching $225 billion in 2004, of which $160 billion went to developing countries.
Ramphele outlined six principles for policy approaches to managing migration, namely to address the role of migrants in a globalizing labor market; migration and development; irregular migration; migrants in society; the human rights of migrants; and the governance of migration. She also called for establishment of a "Global Migration Facility" as a way of bringing increased coherence to migration policy among countries, and at the global level.
Both she and GCIM co-chair Karlsson, a former Swedish development secretary, emphasized the potential development impact of migration, a theme also highlighted by Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, who welcomed the co-chairs and the 15 commissioners who accompanied them.
"Remittances sent home by migrant workers to their families in developing countries do help reduce poverty," Wolfowitz said. He added that regulatory reforms to increase competition among banks had resulted in reduced transaction costs for remittances from the U.S. to Mexico. "Such collaboration delivers a victory for all migrants, particularly poor ones."
The report describes "three Ds" of migration: growing differences in the levels of development, democratic processes and demographic transitions-faster ageing in developed countries than in most developing countries, and a large cohort of young people in poor countries.
Kathleen Newland, a panelist and director of the Migration Policy Institute, welcomed the GCIM recommendations, but posed the challenge as being to develop, "a strategy to get the patients-that is all those who are or need to be involved-to take the medicine."
L. Alan Winters, Director of the Bank's Research Group, also a panelist, described migration as "a tool for development" whose potential will be realized only after data and research has increased our knowledge of its scope and characteristics.
The Bank's migration research program, he said, addresses the development impact of international migration, so as to identify policies, regulations and institutional reforms by developed and developing countries that will deliver improved development outcomes.
At the same time, the Bank is exploring how to improve remittances data, reduce their transaction costs, understand their development impact, and enhance the integrity of money transfer systems.
Later this month, the Bank will publish a research study, International Migration, Remittances and the Brain Drain, followed in November by the annual Global Economic Prospects, whose topic this year is remittances and migration.
For more info please visit:
http://www.gcim.org
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