A commentary on the eve of the UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants
by Rev. Liberato Bautista on September 16, 2016
High level summit, and why words matter
It is the eve of a crucial political process at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the High Level Summit for Refugees and Migrants to be convened on September 19. As UN member states arrive and UN officials and international public servants plan and prepare, NGO representatives are also busying themselves to find space and voice. United Methodists will be in attendance, for certain.
As I write my comments, I have not received allocation from the UN which segment of this summit I will be given access to. Still, I hasten to offer my opinion on what I think are salient aspects of this important summit.
I am not sure whether it is text-fatigue, or that it has no meaning elsewhere but to me, that the shorter name has omitted something significant in the original language used by the UN Secretary-General. You got that right. In shortening the nomenclature, by intent or omission, the words “large movement” are left out.
What to me is crucial in today’s discussion about migrants and refugees is the massiveness of the dispersal, displacement, and dislocation of human beings. At the summit, the focus will be on human beings who are bearers of human dignity and protected human rights. Migrants are human first and migrants second. Migrants are peoples and not documents. Migrants whose being, services and labor are precious and not just commodities for trading and managing.
The enormity of the movement of peoples, especially the involuntary and forced movement of peoples, is truly alarming and must move us to action.
From Mr. Ban’s original text, next Monday’s gathering is to be a high-level meeting to address “large movement of refugees and migrants.” In two different websites of the UN, the original language and the shortened version co-exist. What redeems the short version is that it uses the word “for.” The summit is “for” migrants and refugees and not just “of refugees and migrants that the longer name uses. Here, text matters.
You may say I am parsing words. Indeed, if the summit is for migrants and not just of migration and refugees, then I look forward to the voice and narrative of migrants and refugees stand out. It is they who provide the authentic voice that will lend credence to efforts in the international community, to work towards substantive improvements in government responses to the situation of refugees, migrants, and displaced peoples around the world.
Movement of peoples happen all the time. Some are forced to move, though.
Migration is a fact of life. Human beings and living things move from one place to another in their lifetimes. People move on their own volition. But sometimes, such movement is not voluntary. There are those who are forced to move.
Forced migration, especially massive dislocation and displacement, are realities whose roots and underlying causes we cannot and must not ignore. Lingering wars and conflicts, environmental degradation, human trafficking, political and religious persecution, are causing the involuntary movement and displacement of massive numbers of peoples.
We must not ignore the root causes of forced migration; we must address them with solutions that are just, durable and sustainable.
Migrants are human beings. In fact, they are humans first before migrants.
Migrants are human beings who, like all other human beings, share fundamental human dignity and the equal protection of all human rights. Because movement is a natural thing that human beings do, freedom of movement is precious to human beings.
Human beings have always moved for life and livelihood, for security and survival, indeed, they move to find food, clothing, shelter, work, and so much more. This is why it is a protected human right. Where there is deprivation of these basics in life in the usual places of dwelling and community of peoples, then there is bound to happen an irregular, even, massive movement of people.
Massive movement and dislocation of peoples including migrant workers and asylum seekers, leads to denial of human dignity and a violation of human rights when such movements have been forced by political upheavals, lingering wars and conflicts, economic inequalities, religious persecution, or trafficking in persons of all types.
While globalization heralded the swift movement of capital and profits across national borders, the movement of laborers seeking work in developed countries of the world steadily grew and yet increasingly restricted and securitized, ethnicized and racialized, even gendered and sexualized—conditions that today describe why attention to the massive movement, displacement and resettlement of migrants and refugees is beyond alarming. They invite moral outrage and a commitment to not just “welcome the strangers” in our midst, but to “turn strangers into friends” and “seek justice and pursue it.”
Migration and attendant issues related to it must be seen and understood from a human rights-based approach.
Freedom of movement is a protected human right already codified in national, regional and international laws, even in indigenous knowledge and practice. “All human rights for all.” This is an understanding that evolved and is asserted within the human rights community, assertions like “All human rights are indigenous people’s rights”, or “All human rights are women’s rights.”
In this case, “All human rights are migrant rights,”such assertions point to the injustices heaped upon people forced to move and locate—when they are defined migrants first and humans last. When their value is assessed as a commodity that is tradeable and manageable.
Ownership of property and the accumulation of wealth drove the most historically remarkable movement of people.
It was the movement of colonizers that impacted in the most consequential manner the relation between nature and human beings. The accumulation of properties drove the appetite for moving, no longer just in one’s immediate surroundings but beyond into other lands, indeed across lands and oceans. Colonialism did that in a manner and process that is planned and consequential. It also shows that today’s migrants and refugees were not the first to move and relocate.
The so-called Doctrine of Discovery provided a set of religio-philosophical underpinnings and ideological backing, for the colonial seizure of indigenous lands and properties, including the subjugation of people’s allegiances, that consequentially displaced peoples from their traditional places of abode and sources of livelihood.
Colonialism,slavery and racism, and other historic ignominies that are at the root of the massive movement and displacement of peoples then and now – including current realities of racial discrimination, xenophobia and various forms of intolerance – must not to be forgotten in this Monday’s meetings, and beyond. My hope is that these notions will enrich and set the moral compass of Monday’s summit whose current trajectory is to “secure firm, action-oriented commitments to enhance responsibility-sharing and to strengthen international cooperation,” and for UN Member States to “adopt a global compact on responsibility-sharing for refugees and agree on a roadmap to guide the development of a global compact for safe, regular and orderly migration.”
The commodification of nature and people and the commoditization of their labor and services is at the roots of wanton disregard for the dignity and human rights of migrants and refugees.
Also at the root of the misery and injustice experienced by migrants is the treatment today of both nature and peoples as goods, much like the commodification of migrants and the commoditization of migrants’ labor and services.
Today, migrants and their labor are under the spell of globalization regarded as tradeable goods—to be had for bidding at the lowest cost and least burden. Over the course of history, the conditions of free movement of people became more the free, unbridled and unregulated movement of capital and the restricted and regulated movement of peoples, goods and their services. These changes were due to the intervention of and struggle among political forces, economic classes and cultural movements.
Over the same course of history, the material conditions of both peoples and nature have changed. These changes have significantly affected the movement of peoples, goods, and services. People chasing labor. Labor chasing capital. Capital chasing wealth. Capital goes where more profit can be made, not necessarily where it is socially and responsibly needed.
A migration framework must be based on human rights, sustainability and development justice, recognizing fundamental issues of historic injustices, global inequality and injustice and moves to address them.
Forced and enforced migration (migration that is encouraged in national public policies) are violations of human rights.
The global formation called Churches Witnessing With Migrants (CWWM) of which Church and Society of The United Methodist is an active participant and leader, asserts that “freedom of movement is a human right that allows peoples to forge human relations and found sustainable communities. Forced migration is a violation of human rights.” It goes on to say that: “Violent situations, environmental degradation, militarization, wars, lingering conflicts and political persecution in countries have resulted in internal displacement and forced and external movement of peoples that have produced asylum seekers and massive numbers of refugees. Under such conditions, people have fled their communities and sought refuge elsewhere, including in other countries. In situations like these, indigenous peoples, women, children, and peoples with disabilities who are migrants or are family members of migrants are especially more at risk and vulnerable.”
Migrants are subjects of their own destinies. Nothing about migrants must be decided without migrants in the decision making process.
For those who will attend Monday’s summit, we must be conscious that the agency—human and moral agency—of migrants and refugees is visible and recognized. The summit, after all is for them and not just of them.
CWWM also asserts that “Migrants are human beings with dignity and worth who cannot be reduced to mere commodities traded and exchanged in the global market place. Not even structures of injustice in the global market system can strip them of their dignity and worth.
“A true and meaningful dialogue includes migrants as subjects of their own destinies and puts primacy to their human rights and welfare. Such dialogue must not be limited to migration as a strategy for development. We must challenge policies and priorities set by international institutions and national governments that allot more funds to profit enterprises and military and defense budgets and lesser to education, health, decent labor and the environment.”
Such assertions are very much like what the General Conference of The United Methodist Church has said in an approved resolution this year. In the resolution “Welcoming the Migrant to the US”, The United Methodist Church “understands that at the center of Christian faithfulness to Scripture is the call we have been given to love and welcome the sojourner. We call upon all United Methodist churches to welcome newly arriving migrants in their communities, to love them as we do ourselves, to treat them as one of our native-born, to see in them the presence of the incarnated Jesus, and to show hospitality to the migrants in our midst, believing that through their presence we are receiving the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
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Editor’s Note: The Rev. Liberato C. Bautista is assistant general secretary for United Nations and international affairs of the General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist and also serves as its main representative at the United Nations. Rev. Bautista serves in the leadership of Churches Witnessing With Migrants (CWWM)—a global tripartite platform of migrants and refugees, together with migrant-serving organizations and ecumenical and faith-based institutions worldwide.
You can find Church and Society’s statement on the summit here.
