At the United Nations

A first-hand account of student and alumni participation in the United Nations High Level Dialogue on Migration and Development

Our well-shined shoes clicking on the marble floor intermingled with our nervous breathing: we were here. Marguerite Heyns, Harrison Ellis, Sophie Letendre and I had finally made it inside the United Nations building and were present at the High Level Dialogue on Migration and Development (HLD).We’d been in New York for a few days already, participating in a civil-society event called the People’s Global Action on Migration, Development, and Human Rights—and our ability to walk through the doors with our freshly minted UN-passes spoke to both the successes and the challenges that civil societies had faced in getting to this moment.

A few short years ago, this whole event would likely have seemed fairly esoteric to us. Migration was something birds did, and seeing as most of us were in political science, what did it matter to us? Through an opportunity with the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI), Marguerite, Harrison, dozens of other interns and I were all able to go to different organizations throughout Asia and engage in community-development work. Many of these internships were funded through the now-defunct CIDA program, Students for Development (SFD). CAPI has reformulated its funding and is still working to send more UVic students out to different countries in Asia. A key facet of this engagement has been on the topic of migration.

Many of us, myself included, worked with our organizations to prepare for the HLD, which brings together states to discuss migration policy and, at least in theory, to come together with more effective policies for managing the huge numbers of transnational migrants (estimated to number about 215 million). Civil societies have lobbied long and hard to enter these kinds of negotiations, really beginning in 2006 with the first HLD, and continuing through the subsequent, more casual Global Forum(s) on Migration and Development (GFMD) from 2007-2012. The advocacy efforts of a massive array of civil societies, from labour unions, to research organizations, to grass-roots civil societies, have collectively amassed a powerful, coherent agenda which allowed them to get access to spaces such as the HLD and GMFD—and by association, allowed relative newcomers to the field like all of us, to tag along for the ride.

The fight to get there was no easy one and even within the halls it was harder still. Many countries which receive high numbers of migrants have been reluctant to adopt regulations or conventions that civil societies feel adequately address the basic human rights of migrants, which are frequently violated. Our actions as interns centered on collecting information, whether on the abuses against migrants or about positive or negative policies practiced around the world (such as the frequently critiqued kafala system in many Gulf Countries), to help fuel informed activism. Being present at the High Level Dialogue was an opportunity to witness how successful that research and advocacy has been—unfortunately mixed. No formal declaration was made upon the conclusion of the High Level Dialogue on October 4, but states have agreed to continue talking through the GFMD process.

It is the hope of civil societies that through this process more comprehensive, rights-based regulations in all countries—sending and receiving—will be adopted. For interns like us witnessing an event like this only motivates us more to continue to be involved in the fight for equality for some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

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George P.R. Benson is a fifth-year student of Honours Political Science in History who worked in Bangladesh with the WARBE Development Foundation in 2012. He continues to be active in international development issues and migration and hopes to pursue a career in urban planning.