IPS
Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 5 (IPS) - The world's 200 million international
migrants have traditionally been viewed in terms of dollars and cents:
how much hard currency have they remitted to their home countries?
What role did migrants play in the politics or civil wars in
their home countries: Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Liberia, Mozambique, Turkey,
Morocco?
In Lebanon, returning migrants used the wealth earned abroad
to engage in politics, particularly when new political forces were
formed after the 1989 Ta'ef Accord ending the country's longstanding
civil war.
"Evidence that emigrants have spurred the improvement of
political institutions in their home countries is accumulating," says
the 217-page study.
Morocco and Turkey have extended political and economic rights
to emigrants and allowed dual citizenships: one with their home
countries and the other with their adopted countries.
Mauritius and India have been cited as two countries which
have attracted migrants back home - either for political or economic
reasons.
Just as migrants enrich the social fabric of their adopted
homes, so too they can act as agents of political and social change, if
they return home with new values, expectations and ideas shaped by
their experiences abroad.
The study singles out two high profile examples: Ellen
Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, who is Africa's first woman head of state,
and Joaquim Chissano, former president of Mozambique.
Johnson-Sirleaf, who spent time in the United States as a
student, was director of the Regional Bureau for Africa at the New
York-based UNDP before she returned home.
Chissano, who studied medicine in Portugal, was an expatriate
political activist who represented Mozambique's independence movement
Frelimo while living in Paris.
But there is also a downside to the migrant issue.
Although in most cases engagement was constructive, there are
migrant groups which have supported civil wars, as in the case of Sri
Lanka, notes the study.
Asked if Sri Lankan expatriates have been more constructive or
destructive to their homeland, Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to
the United Nations, Ambassador Palitha Kohona, said Tamil migrants
played a central role in the conflict that ravaged the country for over
30 years and caused over 70,000 deaths.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an insurgent group in
northern Sri Lanka, fought an unsuccessful three-decade battle for a
separate nation state.
The expatriate Tamil community, mostly in Western Europe and
Canada, "were the main sources of funding for the LTTE war machine, for
the purchase of high explosives, guns and land mines", Kohona told IPS.
The annual collection from expatriate groups, he said, was in the region of an estimated 300 million dollars.
Many were intimidated in to subscribing to the cause, including
through compulsory deductions from credit card accounts, he said. Now
that the conflict is over, said Kohona, this community has the
opportunity to play a genuinely constructive role.
"They could invest the same funds to uplift the people of the North and
give the children a better chance in the world," he added, pointing out
the potential benefits of expatriate remittances.
According to the U.S. State Department's background briefing
on foreign terrorist organisations, some of the funding for the
militant Palestinian group Hamas came from Palestinian expatriates.
The Armed Islamic Group (GIA), battling the Algerian
government for the creation of an Islamic state, is being partly funded
by Algerian expatriates, many of whom reside in Western Europe,
according to the State Department.
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) raised funds from Irish
expatriates in New York and Boston, while the Khalistan Movement,
campaigning for a Sikh homeland in India, has been receiving funds from
Indian expatriates living in the United States and Canada.
The UNDP study, titled 'Overcoming barriers: Human mobility
and development', also casts new light on some common misconceptions.
Most migrants do not cross national borders, but instead move within
their own country: 740 million people are internal migrants, almost
four times the number of international migrants.
Among international migrants, less than 30 percent move from developing to developed countries.
The study also says that remittances to developing countries are
expected to decline from 308 billion dollars in 2008 to an estimated
293 billion dollars in 2009 - caused primarily by the spreading
financial crisis worldwide.
The world recession has quickly become a jobs crisis, and a jobs crisis is generally bad news for migrants.
In a number of areas, the number of new migrants is down, while
some destination countries are taking steps to encourage or compel
migrants to leave.
But now is the time for action, the study concludes.
Return to the list <<<<<
