The high-level North and Central American Task Force on Migration, of which the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is a partner, recently issued important recommendations for filling key governance gaps and promoting better coordination of the often-disjointed response to migration in the region.
The recommendations stress regional responsibility sharing and outline specific ways to improve regional mechanisms, support development and protection strategies by involving civil society and expanding labor and protection pathways for refugees and migrants.
“Rising pressures on borders and asylum systems, the diversification of migration flows and the increasingly hemispheric nature of human movement across the Americas all make evident the fact that policymakers must fashion a collaborative regional approach to managing migration from and through northern Central America,” MPI President Andrew Selee, who is a Task Force member, said today. “The limits of unilateral approaches have been laid bare, and the United States, Mexico and Canada must work collaboratively with the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras on short- and longer-term solutions to address the drivers of migration and bring legality to increasing migration from the region.”
The Summit of the Americas that will gather political leaders from across the hemisphere in Los Angeles on June 6-10 and the upcoming North American Leaders Summit that Mexico will host offer platforms to deepen the migration dialogue, Selee added.
Key among the 70 recommendations in the Task Force’s summary report:
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who recently passed away, was a founding co-chair of the Task Force, along with Lloyd Axworthy, Chair, World Refugee & Migration Council and former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs; Mayu Brizuela de Avila, former Salvadoran Minister of Foreign Affairs; Julieta Castellanos, former Rector, National Autonomous University of Honduras; Laura Chinchilla, former President of Costa Rica; Silvia Giorguli Saucedo, President of El Colegio de México; and Cardinal Álvaro Ramazzini, Bishop of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Task Force members include a broad range of civil society, business and academic institutions, with MPI’s Andrew Selee and Doris Meissner serving as members.
Created through an initiative of the World Refugee & Migration Council in partnership with the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, El Colegio de México, MPI and the Inter-American Dialogue, with support from the government of Canada, the Task Force issued evidence-based recommendations that promote responsibility sharing across North and Central America on six key issues:
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The summary report with key Task Force recommendations is available here. Related reports and recommendations on the issues above, can be found here.
The North and Central American Task Force on Migration is a non-governmental forum of academics, civil society and business leaders, and former policymakers in dialogue with current government officials created to facilitate a broadly driven solution dialogue among the countries involved in the crisis of migration and forced displacement in the region. For more on its mission and membership, click here.
MPI’s participation in the Task Force represents just one facet of its work on the region. Through its Building a Regional MigratNion System project, MPI has articulated a new approach to managing regional migration centered around four pillars: effective humanitarian protection systems, targeted legal migration pathways, professionalized migration management and informed investments in development and governance in countries of origin, transit and reception.