Introduction
to the debate by Johan
Ketelers,
General Secretary of the Catholic International
Commission for the Migrants.
We live in the era of rapid communications, communications that delude us in what we are brought to believe, but that is unquestionably no excuse for our ignorance any more. We live in a world that demonstrates to us every day that it is no longer the era of individual nations and historical differences, but that carries us away, in a swirl of consequences, often uncontrollable by our traditional keys of reading. What is started in a country has consequences on another, what happens in a sector of activity overlaps another, what happens to my brother, happens to me also.
Our
world has changed fundamentally: what used to be far away is now within reach,
the person who was located at
While
facing this maelstrom, we should, as christians, find
in our faith, all the necessary reasons to be strong, even to be able to be
guides, but we allow ourselves to be carried away by panic and by the security
silence offers us. “
Don’t be afraid …” was the powerful message of Pope John Paul II to all the nations and
peoples of the world. But fear encloses us, blinds us, and incites us to seek protection
and defence.
As christians we already were pilgrims in life; now we are also
migrants in the world. The relation between these two concepts seems to be the source of
questions and worries while it should be perceived as an invitation to engagement.
We are invited to reread our presence in the world, as christians,
with new eyes, ensuring that the dignity of the human persons be respected as a
fundamental need, confirmed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Although this declaration is sixty years old, it is threatened today by debates
that seem to tend to make it hollow, and by political opinions trying to select
those to whom these declarations should apply in priority.
There
are over 200 millions of migrants in the world and among them 10 millions of
refugees. This means that one person out of thirty is a migrant. To these 200
millions of persons must be added 27 millions of displaced persons, half of them
in
Paradoxally enough, migration
is often present in the medias under its humanitarian
aspect: persons who choose to cross deserts, rivers and seas at the risk of
their lives, persons who are thrown overboard or who are drowned because they
have left in precarious embarkations, simple persons who live heroic situations
to meet the needs of their family. We are moved by these images and see them as
appeals for solidarity. It is evident
that migration is not above all a humanitarian challenge, but more surely a
challenge of political or social orders. If migration has taken the bearing for
human urgency, it is mainly due to the lack of a political will to intervene
before facts (to act on causes) and to the absence of international governance,
even a globalized one in this matter (to act on movements and their
consequences.)
Migrations are not
either a European problem, but a global challenge. The parameters of
migration are a global process and it is regrettable that the reading of these movements remains linked to national concepts related to
national and regional protection. The attitude of auto protection is a
legitimate one, but humanitarian concepts and growing globalization request us
to look beyond these boundaries and extend the need of protection to global
humanity, with the final goal of assuring protection to all persons.
In the establishment of such a process of protection for all, would lay the
value of a better-understood international solidarity and the concept of global
governance.
Global governance is essential
to ensure the management of this expanding global mobility. Migration, welfare,
economical growth and labour markets are interconnected realities. In the past,
the required balance was developed at national levels and progressively at
regional ones. Today, the need is absolutely situated at a global level. The
approach and research for global governance will have to keep into account not
only economical and national criterias, but also those of development, poverty,
human rights and welfare. Governance must then refrain from seeking above all a
reduction of mobility, but rather the development of the potential of
migration, which does not necessarily mean an increase in the number of
migrants.
To close doors does not reduce the migration
fluxes, but deviate them or transform them into
irregular migration. Instead of sending firm messages aiming at the closing of
doors, we should concentrate our energies on the causes and the consequences of
the increasing mobility. We should invest more into the struggle against
poverty and for development, including rural development, let aside since many
years, and which today is one of the main causes for urban migration, into more
social protection for those who have chosen a different future. We have to
develop a transparent system, one that determines, recognizes, and emphasizes about the
rights and obligations of migrants as individuals, as cultural groups and, framed by their
belonging to different forms of regrouping. These rights and obligations should
be translated into laws and in applied legal frames. This legal framework
should prove to be useful tools offering the advantage of transparency and “a
pool of reference”. The ONU’s treaties on human rights have edited a large
number of these rights and invited all the nations that have ratified them to
ensure their registration as national laws and to have them applied. The
Convention for the protection of migrant workers, that has
not been ratified by the northern states, is still today not applied. It
is evident that the correct application of all these conventions would
contribute in lessening the considerable challenges attached to human mobility.
The
topic of migration invites us to revisit our own convictions about democracy
and moral values; to question ourselves on the everyday expression of our
faith; to develop paths that will lead humanity towards a better world. Human
mobility is not one of the curses of the Apocalypse: it is the story of persons
like you and me, trying like ourselves to build a better future; it is the
story of humanity in search of itself. Human mobility is an appeal to a
mobility of the spirit.
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