Final Brief in Series Informing Negotiation and Implementation of Global Compact for Migration Pulls Together Key Findings, Challenges Ahead

WASHINGTON — Migration and development policy discussions have slowly but surely edged closer on the international stage in recent years, most recently with adoption by UN member states last December of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. While the compact is not explicitly a development manifesto, it addresses many of the elements that link migration to a broad conception of human development, including migrants’ social and economic inclusion.

The global compact’s passage represents an important milestone in the effort to derive more benefit from the relationship between migration and development. But long-term impact will depend on states’ commitment to implement the global compact and cooperate with the UN system and each other, a new Migration Policy Institute (MPI) policy brief notes.

In Migration, Development, and Global Governance: From Crisis toward Consolidation, MPI Senior Fellow Kathleen Newland draws together the key findings of a series of policy briefs informing the negotiation of the compact and now implementation of some of its most significant aspects. Among them, how migrant-origin, transit and destination states will cooperate on complex topics such as returns and reintegration, and how development assistance could help refugee-hosting countries build effective humanitarian protection systems.

Newland notes that much is left to the states in terms of ensuring that the global compact will have lasting impact. “It remains to be seen how strongly committed states will be to implementation of the migration compact’s objectives,” she writes. “Some have made a robust start. But the controversies and divergent interests inherent to migration policy have by no means disappeared in a cloud of comity surrounding the compact; rather, they have been submerged in an agenda so broad that it allows room for every state to construct its own priorities for implementation.”

The policy brief, and the broader series it is part of, explore some of the most important questions at the heart of the compact’s negotiation and implementation:

• The complexity of the relationship between migration and development
• How both low- and high-skilled labor migration affects development in migrants’ countries of origin
• How the governance of international migration has changed in recent years and is likely to evolve going forward.

The brief is the ninth and final publication in the series “Towards the Global Compact for Migration: A Development Perspective,” which results from a partnership between MPI and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Read the policy brief here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/migration-development-global-governance-crisis-consolidation

Find the whole series here: www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/international-program/global-compact-migration

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The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Washington, DC dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide. MPI provides analysis, development and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at local, national and international levels.