Select Committee on International Development Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)

13 JANUARY 2004  

DR NICHOLAS VAN HEAR, DR CECILIA TACOLI, MS CATHERINE BARBER AND MR RAM CHANDRA PANDA

  Q120 Mr Davies: Two per cent per annum?

  Dr Van Hear: No. The stock, if you like.

  Ms Barber: I would just come back to the question of what the UK can do for migrants within developing countries—internal migration within developing countries—so that their rights are respected. I think that, as a donor, the UK can encourage developing countries to mainstream migration in their poverty reduction analysis, in the same way as gender, or HIV/AIDS, or conflict are mainstreamed. I will give you an example. I have been working recently in the Kotido region in Uganda, where there is a large pastoralist community and there is seasonal migration. It is a predictable pattern of migration, such that the menfolk and the boys from the villages will go off for six months a year and look after the cattle and then come back. Even so, their public services do not respond to that, because it is not in the planning mentality; they have not captured it yet. That means that the boys are not going to school. The girls are not going to school either, but the boys are not going to school partly because they are migrating. When the government allocates funds to districts, it does it on the basis of permanent residence in the district. If there is seasonal migration from Kotido to Kitgum and those people do not count in the population figures, then the funds do not come there. That is in Uganda, which is doing pretty well in terms of poverty reduction. So I think that mainstreaming migration could really help.

  Q121 John Barrett: Perhaps I could move on to the rights of immigrants in the UK. The UK Government have not ratified the UN Convention on the Protection of Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. The Government argue that that it has the balance right between the rights of migrant workers and immigration control. Do you agree? Do you think that the Government have the balance right?

  Ms Barber: Oxfam would certainly encourage the Government to sign the Convention. If the provisions for migrant workers' rights are as good as we say they are, then I think that we should not be afraid of signing this Convention.

  Dr Van Hear: I echo that.

  Q122 John Barrett: Are you aware of anything which would dramatically change if the Government decide to sign the Convention—which would change from the situation now?

  Dr Van Hear: To my knowledge, it is only the sending countries—migrants' countries of origin—that have ratified and signed the Convention and no destination countries have. So the UK would be a leader if it were to do so.

  Ms Barber: I am not aware of anything that would hugely change but, having said that, if we do not expect big changes then why should we be afraid to sign it? If there were going to be changes and that would mean that migrants were doing better, then we should also sign it. So I do not think that there is any reason why we should not sign it, on that argument. We will provide further written evidence on this question if desired[2].

  Q123 Tony Worthington: In each of your papers I think you all say that it would be better if everything was more coherent—which I would agree with. However, you have dealt with migration in different bags. There is the asylum bag, the development bag, the humanitarian bag, the trade bag, and so on. Have any of you seen where anyone has achieved coherence? Where progress has been made? None of you goes on to say, "This is a coherent policy that we are offering to you". Is that because it is too difficult?

  Dr Van Hear: My experience, and probably your experience, is that the home affairs or domestic affairs side of things have a very different set of interests from the development people, and there are quite evident tensions between them. You can see this at the EU level, and I imagine in the UK Government as well. There are therefore inherent tensions there to be overcome. I think that a very small step in the right direction has been this High-Level Working Group on Asylum and Migration in the EU, which has at least brought together those various parties. It has not been very successful. The migration control imperative has dominated in that format. As I understand it, it has been too unilateral. That means the EU end of things has dominated in these partnerships that they are supposed to be trying to develop with target countries in the developing world. However, at least it is a forum where these different elements of policy—foreign policy, development policy, migration control, security—can come together and talk to each other. So I would say that there is a need in the UK to offer some kind of similar forum where those parties come together, if they do not already. Some kind of standing committee on migration and development, for example, might be useful.

  Q124 Tony Worthington: Is the biggest force for change or coherence likely to be labour shortage in Europe, perhaps the United States, and other countries—where they would have to take a different attitude to migration?

  Dr Van Hear: It is one spur, yes—where both migration and development issues are forced together, both in terms of development in the developed world and the impact on the sending countries.

  Ms Barber: Yes. I think what Nicholas was saying was that there would be a convergence towards interests being aligned—as opposed to there being attention to wanting to keep people out, people wanting them to come in. If there is a labour shortage or a demographic trend such that we actually need more people, then that inherent tension that he was talking about does start to disappear. In the absence of a perfect forum for reconciling trade, aid, immigration, asylum, et cetera, I would like to see the Department for International Development analysing other policies from the Home Office or from the Foreign Office a little more assertively, to say, "What impact will this have on development?" For example, to look at the recent sector-based schemes from the Home Office, under which 10,000 low-skilled economic migrants are coming into the UK this year. There has not been an analysis of that from a development point of view, and that is something which could very easily have been done. That would have been a step towards joined-up policymaking.

  Dr Van Hear: Perhaps I could give one example of coherence or non-coherence at the other end, at the sending end. I have interviewed households in Sri Lanka, Tamil households in the conflict areas, who feature many different forms of migration. Some, the elderly, might stay in their home village; others are internally displaced within Sri Lanka; still others have sought refuge in Tamil Nadu in south India; other members of the same family or extended family have gone to Norway, Britain, or wherever; others may have gone to work as labour migrants in the Gulf countries. My point is that a policy change in one of those countries or environments—in the Gulf or in the UK—will impact on all those other forms of migration, and it will affect the kinds of strategies that households try to work out in terms of their livelihoods, for instance. So that is one area where there is a need for coherence. You have to think of the implications of what your measures are for these different interests, even within households.

  Q125 Mr Khabra: The New Economics Foundation would like the definition of "refugees" to be changed, to include those who are forced to migrate due to environmental changes. Those environmental changes in the modern world, as everyone knows, are man-made, such as global warming. What in your view would be the result of expanding the definition of "refugees" to include environmental refugees?

  Dr Tacoli: I think that it is important to attract more attention than there is at the moment to the impact of climate change. Having said that, it is extremely difficult to define what environmental refugees are. We know that there are internally displaced persons who are moved because of large infrastructural projects—dams, for example. Would that be part of it? The example that is given by the New Economics Foundation is a very strong one, namely the small islands in the Pacific which will go under water. However, it is a very limited example. It cannot be expanded to many other situations. It is very complex, and I think that there is a risk of missing the fact that environmental change is one of the many aspects which are motivations for migration.

  Q126 Mr Khabra: As we know, highly industrialised countries such as the USA are mostly responsible for global warming and are not even willing to co-operate with the rest of the countries of the world to reduce pollution. The definition of "refugee" is those who are running away from a political situation, but here we are trying to include others—those who are forced to migrate for various reasons. One of the modern ones is that, because of global warming, the sea level rises and people become homeless or, due to global warming, there could be a drought in a country. Some people get carried away by their emotions and their views. My personal view—and I would like you to tell me if I am wrong—is that there should be a special responsibility on the part of the highly industrialised countries, if they cause a disaster for human beings in another part of the world, to take the responsibility of maintaining and supporting them.

  Dr Van Hear: Yes, but how you finger the blameworthy countries is another question. It is probably an impossibility. I agree that this issue of displacement by environmental factors needs to be highlighted, but I am against incorporating environmental refugees into the definition of "refugees". It would just dilute the current refugee regime, if you like, which is already under attack from various quarters.

  Q127 Mr Davies: Why would it dilute it?

  Dr Van Hear: By including yet another category. Maybe I have misunderstood your question. If you mean extending the Refugee Convention or whatever international legal mechanism to include environmental refugees, I think that is a non-starter, because the 1951 Convention has rather specific criteria for defining refugees, which allow degrees of protection to be sought, and so on.

  Q128 Mr Davies: It is a bad idea because it changes the Convention?

  Dr Van Hear: I would not throw that out of the window, but you cannot extend the Convention to everything. For example, you could also include the 10 million or so people a year worldwide who are displaced by development projects and other migration-linked development—by dams, and so on. Are we going to extend the coverage of the Convention, or whatever international mechanisms you want to devise, indefinitely?

  Mr Battle: It is not as if it is an unreal problem now. There are islands in the south Pacific where people have been removed entirely because the ocean is rising up over their island and they have to be found somewhere else to live. I am not sure the scale and timeframe of that is quantifiable. I think that 2,500 people are being moved from the islands off Tuvalu. Who will make space for them? Where will they go? Who treats them seriously? Maybe the conventions were written at a time when conflict and violence were seen as the main cause of refugee status. If people are going to be swamped by water and their homeland completely drowned, the international community has perhaps to take some responsibility as to their status. I am not quite sure of your response to that.

  Chairman: I think that everyone has canvassed that and made their views known.

  Q129 Mr Davies: Is there not a fair distinction to be made between the victims of a natural disaster—I think that I am following Mr Khabra's views here—where elementary human solidarity might be expected to play a role? So we all share some responsibility. None of us knows when we are going to be a victim of a natural disaster. Secondly, people who are the victims of a man-made but universal disaster like global warming, where we have all contributed, and the developed countries disproportionately. Thirdly, the victims of a development which was a decision taken within a particular country, where much less plausibly do we have a global and universal responsibility for coping with the consequences. Is not that both a reasonably coherent and a reasonably fair distinction to be made?

  Dr Tacoli: May I suggest that, in the case of environmental disasters, cases like the Tuvalu islands which are going under water are quite limited. In most cases, environmental change is actually managed locally. Putting people in a position of being refugees possibly disempowers them. Instead, recognising and supporting their actions for adaptation and mitigation, and reconciling this with international actions and the international responsibility for that, is much more important. I am concerned that the definition of "refugees" does not recognise or support what people do to improve their own situation.

  Mr Davies: What do you think is the proper role in a successful integration of refugees, in this country or elsewhere in the developed world, in ensuring that they have good, full and productive lives and that the rest of the community also benefit from their presence, of (a) central government and (b) local government? Are we in danger of ignoring the important role of local government in that matter?

  Q130 Chairman: I think that this question was in part prompted by the IIED memorandum, referring to the importance of planning for the movement of people to cities, and to ensure that they had adequate access to services and that sort of thing.

  Dr Tacoli: Maybe I misunderstood the question. I thought that this was more related to international migration.

  Q131 Mr Davies: It is. When we are ourselves the target of international migration and people come here, what is the role of (a) central government and (b) local government in ensuring that their settlement here is successful, for all parties concerned? Does local government have a role in that? Is there a responsibility there, or is the only public responsibility one to be carried by central government?

  Dr Van Hear: Local government has responsibility now.

  Q132 Mr Davies: Do you want to make any comment about how effectively that system works? That is what I am inviting you to do. We are inviting you to survey the status quo and tell us where the strengths and weaknesses of the status quo lie, and where there is scope for improvement. That is what Parliament is all about.

  Dr Van Hear: Self-evidently there are tensions in certain places over access to housing and education, which need to be addressed. If those are the kinds of questions that you are concerned with—

  Mr Davies: If you have anything in answer to my question—perhaps you do not, but if you do—I do not want to confine your answers in any way. By mentioning local government, I want to see whether that triggers any response from any of our three invitees today. If it does not, then let us pass on.

  Q133 Mr Colman: Perhaps I can ask a blue-sky-thinking-type question, which is about identifying the best practice which should be followed in linking together policy on aid, migration, development. You were somewhat dismissive of Mr Barrett's proposal that the UN Convention would be a good thing for the UK Government to adopt. I personally would be very interested to receive from you—I notice that it is in the Oxfam proposals that we should in fact sign the Convention—what new rights this would actually give to migrant workers in the UK. Frankly, if we are the first one in the world to sign it, it surely would be good practice to do so. Do you have examples of best practice on where the benefits of migration have been fulfilled and where the risks and costs have been minimised, which you would like to draw to our attention?

  Dr Van Hear: I think that some of them have already been drawn to your attention. For example, the Mexican case where, for each dollar that a Mexican migrant worker remits, this is matched by a dollar from the central government, the regional government, the municipal government, and the local government. I think that has proved to be quite a useful scheme which could be reproduced elsewhere. The Mexican authorities seem to be the most advanced in that respect. The Philippines has also been referred to in previous discussion, where they have taken account, for example in their training of nurses, of the potentially damaging effect that overseas recruitment of nurses might have on their own health systems by training more nurses than they need—for "export", if you like. Those are two examples, therefore. Also, home town associations have been referred to in the Mexican case. I think that these kinds of things need to be taken up and reproduced in other areas.

  Dr Tacoli: I would sound a slightly more negative note. Hopefully not, but my concern is that there might be a little too much expectation that remittances on their own might play quite an important developmental role. I am not sure that this is the case. In all these examples which have been mentioned, there is a strong, accountable and capable government at the national level and at the local level. In many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa for example, this does not exist. Any expectation that migration can contribute to development in home areas has to go hand in hand with strengthening the institutions in home countries, making them accountable, representative, and capable of responding to the opportunities which are provided by remittances. So far, we have not seen much of that—especially in the poorest countries, which are the ones which need it the most.

  Q134 Mr Colman: Ms Barber—best practice?

  Ms Barber: I wanted to pick up on the point Dr Tacoli made, that remittances are not always useful if the infrastructure is not right. Obviously, if there is a healthy investment climate, remittances will be more useful; but even a country like Somalia receives 25 to 30% of its GDP as remittances. Back in 2001 the main transmission channel for remittances to Somalia was a private financial institution called Al-Barakaat. When that was cut off in 2001, under fears that it was a source of terrorist funding, the consequences for Somalia were very serious. Even though presumably those remittances were not being invested in factories and so on, they were very important for tackling poverty. Best practice? To come to home town associations—that is a phenomenon in the United States which is booming and blossoming. I do not really see that happening in Britain so much. I am not sure if it is because we have some different cultural understanding of dual identity and that it is not acceptable to be Polish-British in the same way that it is to be Mexican-American. I imagine that, if this were a committee meeting in the United States, you would have been bombarded with submissions from Mexican-American groups and home town associations. I do not know if that is the case now, but I suspect probably not. Maybe that is a challenge for the Department for International Development to take a look at. Can it be working more with ethnic minority groups in the UK? It is something that Oxfam is starting to do itself—starting up programmes with minority groups in the UK and, for example, trying to attract funding for very specific programmes to provide clean water in towns in Rajasthan. More broadly, there are attempts to get overseas citizens to remit money. For example, the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation, which is a government agency, has something called "the remittance book programme". If you remit $10,000, you get a gold card; if you remit $2,500, you get a silver card. This entitles you to various benefits like special lounges at airports, free issuance of passports, exemption from import duties, and so on—which sounds quite attractive to me, and apparently has quite a good take-up. There are similar examples in India. Although not quite such a developing country, Portugal has been very good at attracting its Diaspora to remit money. I could go into detail, but maybe the best thing is to refer you to a paper by the Inter-American Development Bank by Manuel Orozco, who has written several papers on policy for attracting remittances and for the investment of remittances.[3]

  Mr Colman: You have suggested that DFID should support home towns as a positive thing. Other panellists may like to say what other single thing the UK Government/DFID should be doing to support successful South-South migration or North-South or South-North migration. What should the UK Government do as a single example, if you like, of best practice in this area?

  Q135 Chairman: I am going to give the witnesses time to think about that—Mr Panda, you are Deputy Speaker of the Orissa Legislative Assembly and you have asked if you can address the Committee. We will have a vote at four o'clock. Perhaps you could speak for a few minutes. Then if any other colleague wants to add anything, they could do that. We shall then give a final tour de table to our panel—by which time they will have thought up some good ideas to give to Mr Colman. Mr Panda, what would you like to say?

  Mr Panda: Chairman, I have only a few suggestions to make on this subject. I have come to see your programme and I am fortunate to witness the proceedings of this Committee. Since reference has also been made to my country and this is more or less a global issue, I would like to draw the Committee's attention to the following. Sir, migration is a normal course in human civilisation, so it should not be considered from a harsh point of view, it should have a human approach. Migration is also not confined to developing countries. Four decades ago lots of immigrants came to India from Tibet because of conflict. Migration never takes place out of pleasure. This may have been due to political necessity or even economic activity. Around about a decade ago about half a million people migrated from Sri Lanka to India because of internal conflict. I do not have an accurate figure, but now at least some migrant workers from Bangladesh are working in cities like Bombay, Calcutta and New Delhi. My point is that migration is not confined only to developing countries. The principal ingredient is that in all developed countries human factors should be considered. In a country like Great Britain or the USA, the principal ingredient is the amount of work available in these two places. 20 to 30% of developing countries do not yet have irrigation potential. The agricultural potential opportunities are not fully flexed. Huge forests have disappeared and that is also posing a problem. We are now discussing the global warming position. But apart from the economic factor, I would request that the Committee suggest to the Government how to concentrate its aid programme to developing countries and, wherever necessary, to concentrate on the irrigation possibilities. Once you double that irrigation potential naturally the labour force of that particular region will look at the work that can take place and they will not migrate to other places.

  Hugh Bayley: I would like to put to the panel three conceptual thoughts which I am struggling with. I have not even got past the stage of trying to define what the problem is. The first conceptual issue I would like your response to, not in empirical terms, not in terms of this policy or that policy might drive from it, in ideological terms is this. When we look at the manifestations of globalisation, most people on the Left usually argue for regulation and the control of trade, of labour standards, of environmental standards and so on. Yet today we are in the odd position of having progressive humanitarians coming over here and saying the answer to our problem is to strip away the controls, to have the free movement of people. Conceptually, what is going on? That is the first question. The second question is to do with policy coherence. We seem to be talking as though, if you simply stacked up all your policies together, home affairs policies, foreign affairs policies, welfare policies, international development policies, they will all fit neatly together and they will all be complimentary. We have had some people talking to us about the win-win benefits from migration. Surely that is a pretty rosy view of things because although migrants in general contribute a lot to the country to which they might migrate, the issue is surely to choose what outcomes you want. I remember talking to the Canadians about how they looked at their asylum policy and they said they took loads of refugees. I was told by a senior Canadian parliamentarian he would go around the refugee camps and look for the doctors, the engineers, people who could contribute to Canada. Well, okay, that is a big benefit to Canada, but there is probably less of a safety and sanctuary benefit to refugees because only some arrive. How do we weigh the different benefits, the benefit to our economy, the benefit to the developing country's economy, the skill transfers and the safety of individuals? It is not a win-win. If you do more of some of these things you do less of others. How do we try and resolve that continuum in policy terms? Thirdly, there is this concept of fairness which I think you, Nicholas, used. If you were, as Catherine was suggesting, to increase the opportunities for legal economic migration it would be fairer because you would get more people, lower income, economic migrants, you would not have to have $10,000 to get yourself smuggled in, but there are so many different "fairnesses". I have had settled economic migrants in my constituency saying the way we treat asylum-seekers, letting so many in, is completely unfair because people like them whose family have been queuing up for an entry permit as economic migrants do not get a look in and the only way you can get into this country is by breaking the rules. There are so many overlapping fairnesses, but does fairness actually mean anything at all?

  Q136 Chairman: Does any other colleague have anything they would like to add? No. Let us start with Nicholas and do a tour de table on what Mr Panda has said or any of Hugh's questions.

  Dr Van Hear: I am not going to be able to address all of your conceptual questions adequately but maybe I will have a go at the second one on coherence. Yes, it is a pretty rosy, maybe utopian, idea to try and get coherence between these different fields, development and migration, since we have already noted the tensions between them. It might be an idea to keep them separate, but I think, at the very least, we should not allow them to conflict with each other, to negate each other. That is one more modest aim perhaps. Turning to specific ways in which the policy fields could be made more complementary and I think DFID is already doing this to some extent, diaspora populations could be engaged in development fora or peace making or conflict prevention mechanisms. One could also look at where their remittances are flowing, what they are doing and so on, and then tailor one's development assistance accordingly: this is because remittances may not be going to the poorest of the poor and if your development policy is aimed at reducing poverty, you may want to make these different kinds of flows complementary, the remittance flows and development assistance. I also want to make the point that everyone is latching on to this remittance question and it is tending to be seen as a kind of panacea for all problems, even replacing aid. Some might argue that if countries are getting all these remittances why should they also receive development assistance. I think there is a note of caution that needs to be sounded there because remittances are selective in their benefits and they are selective in the people that they benefit.

  Q137 Chairman: Dr Tacoli?

  Dr Tacoli: Very briefly. I will try to address your questions on globalisation and policy coherence, but I would also like to emphasise and insist on the fact that when we are talking about migration in the context of development and poverty we are not really talking so much about migrants coming to Europe, we are talking of people who are pushed out of their livelihoods because there is no irrigation or there is deforestation in the area. In terms of globalisation and policy coherence, I think it is important to think of globalisation as something which does have implications for migration and the policy coherence then comes into play in that any actions, aid actions or development actions, which aim to reduce poverty, need to take into account the migration element of it. I will give you just a couple of examples on how globalisation affects migration. National economic growth strategies which are based on export processing, for example, are going to attract migrants to certain areas where there is more infrastructure than other areas of the country, so there will be a first internal movement. There are spatial implications to whatever national policies are taken and which are often supported by the international community. In terms of globalisation and policy coherence, I think I can say that on the basis of our work in the Sahel, for example, many small farmers who have been living off cotton production are now migrating overseas long term. This is destroying local agricultural production because of labour shortages. When people migrate to the Gulf from Mali, for example, they will be away for at least five years because of the cost of moving so far away. So the implications on the development status and poverty status in home areas are immense. There is a policy coherence issue here which is linked to globalisation, trade policies and what type of agricultural development we have in mind for low income countries where the agricultural sector is still the largest one. I will stop here.

  Ms Barber: Fantastic questions about globalisation and the Left. I am not sure it is entirely fair to say that the Left have been only for regulation and control. If you look at the positions of what you would call progressive humanitarians on trade. Oxfam supporters are certainly not saying no trade. They are saying trade but taking into account the benefits that should go to poor people in developing countries. That is not saying we do not want trade liberalisation, it is saying we want it but with a development focus. I think it is similar when you are looking at labour markets. What I would call the Left are looking at the inequalities which exist because of the international system with restrictions on labour mobility, which does promote big inequalities in terms of wages that would not be there if there was more freedom of movement. It is too idealistic to say that there would be freedom of movement completely, but even small increases or temporary labour schemes in the UK would reduce that gap slightly. I do not think it is inconsistent to say that you are Left Wing and that you care about inequality and you want more freedom of movement. To get back to mundane specifics about what DFID might do, I would like to make two quick points. With due respect to everything that has been said about remittances not being the panacea, they are still very important, they are twice the size of aid flows. There is a lot of research on how banks in the US and in Spain have become "remittance aware" and started to build services around remittances like micro-finance or give people loans to set up businesses or buy property when they return home. I am not aware if similar research exists in the UK and it might be interesting to investigate whether British banks are remittance aware. The other thing is to reiterate this point about the temporary migration schemes which are currently piloting and at the end of January the sector-based scheme will be coming to an end and then there will be a decision about whether to renew it. The Department for International Development could be involved in analysing that decision and looking at the way that those workers are recruited, the conditions that they have in the UK workplace, are they being encouraged to remit money, could the UK Government do something like the matching dollar scheme that was mentioned in perhaps contributing. The migrants pay National Insurance contributions and then they leave the UK after 12 months. Should some of those National Insurance contributions also be sent back to the home countries? Those are quite specific things which the Department could be doing.

  Chairman: Could I just say a big thank you to all our witnesses for grappling with some really complex practical and conceptual issues. Thank you, Mr Panda, for making yourself known to us. We are thinking of doing an inquiry on development assistance and India later this year. It is very good to see you here. Maybe we will find ourselves in Orissa sometime and perhaps we could address your committee then. Thank you.





2   Ev Back

3   Manuel Orozco, 2003, Worker remittances in international scope. Inter-American dialogue research series. Available at http://www.thedialogue.org/publications/country-studies/remittances/worldwde%20remit.pdf Back


 
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