[ad_1]
When the first reports of severe respiratory illness hit the media a year ago, it was some time before we, humanity, realized how seriously impacting this phenomenon would have on our lives. Information and disinformation were important factors in these early days. Was this COVID-19 virus, as we called it, really a serious illness? Was it going to spread around the world? How would we respond and prepare?
Due to the interconnected nature of our world, news about COVID-19 spreads even faster than the disease itself. It gained a foothold in Asia and Europe, then in North America. We got used to standing around and applauding the health workers, and the appalling sight of military trucks lining up to receive coffins. In the background, as they often are, were migrants from all over the world, its mobile workforce.
There are over a billion migrants in the world today,1 and over 270 million of them have crossed international borders.2 In the area served by the Vienna Regional Office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM)3, which encompasses South-Eastern and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, there are more than 32 million international migrants who have taken old and new migration routes.4 They travel along the ancient Silk Road from the Chinese border, through Central Asia and into Russia, across the Caspian and the Black Sea and beyond. They take jobs in old manual industries, such as agriculture and fishing, and pursue modern careers in technology, finance and petrochemicals.
They leave or remain within the formerly closed Soviet states and their satellites on new migration corridors stretching from Ukraine to Poland, Moldova to Romania, Georgia to the Balkans, often taking the jobs that local citizens don’t want. They fill the dangerous jobs, the dirty jobs and, as we have increasingly seen during the COVID-19 era, the vital front-line jobs, working as doctors, nurses, caregivers, couriers and salespeople.
No phenomenon has been as affected by humanity’s response to COVID-19 as migration. Simply put, humans are the primary vector of virus transmission, so the mobility aspects of our response had to be taken into account from day one.
In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, we had a multitude of questions to ask and answer simultaneously. The virus was ethereal, a shapeshifter. Just when we thought we knew something, the rules changed.
We had to look at the obvious health aspects and decide how to protect the communities. How could people get home? Could they be tested and protected against viruses on trains, planes, buses and ships? What would happen to them when they got back? Would mass movements put a strain on already overpopulated and impoverished host communities? How could these communities cope without the billions of dollars generated and donated by their family members abroad?
IOM Regional Director Renata Held
Remittances have been recognized for helping lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the past decade, giving women a greater role in financial decision-making and improving health and safety. education in some of the poorest and most vulnerable segments of society. Low- and middle-income countries received more than $ 550 billion in international remittances in 2019.5 Were we going to see a rollback in all of these gains?
And what about those who couldn’t reach their homes? Would they be more and more marginalized? Would stranded migrants be more vulnerable to violence, exploitation, abuse, discrimination and xenophobia? Would they suffer from job loss, inability to send funds to families, homelessness, limited support and lack of access to vital services, including health care? ? Would they be more prone to risky behavior and therefore to associated physical and mental health problems?
These questions barely scratch the surface of what IOM, our Member States, the communities we serve and the migrants themselves have had to grapple with in these weirdest years. We’ve all had to get used to new ways of living and working, in front of a computer screen or behind a plastic shield, with the ubiquitous masks that will become the zeitgeist of this era, defining every photo taken in 2020.
In our region we now have the largest refugee and migrant population in one country (Turkey) as well as the conflict in Ukraine and most recently in Nagorno-Karabakh. We are seeing continued movements of people to the European Union along routes that start in the heart of Asia. A wide variety of governments rule over a heterogeneous mixture of beliefs, lineages and cultures, some of which date back to ancient empires; their behavior and alliances – and their migration choices – are often based on these long-standing ties.
Even before the pandemic, migrations in this region were diverse, expansive and essential. Climate change, largely caused by human activity, has created new drivers and reasons for migration. As we begin an unpredictable recovery from the shock of COVID-19, great respect and care must be given to the lands, lakes, forests and fields of this immense part of the planet, spanning eleven time zones.
IOM staff in Azerbaijan helped a group of stranded Sri Lankans return home. The majority were students or businessmen who could not continue to study or trade due to COVID-19 restrictions. © IOM 2020
First and foremost, we will emphasize that there can be no recovery unless it is comprehensive and comprehensive. This means that migrants must be at the heart of vaccination and care plans. We urgently need the vibrant dynamism of migration to revive our destroyed economies and fight for prosperity on the way to a just and sustainable world.
On the occasion of International Migrants Day (December 18), there is no greater inspiration to conclude than the words of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres:
“We have seen the emergence of anti-migrant narratives fueling xenophobia and stigma against the very people whose contributions have been so valuable. We now see an opportunity to reinvent human mobility, to build more inclusive and resilient societies, where well-managed migration harnesses the expertise and motivation of migrants to revive national and international economies.6
Notes
1. World Health Organization, “Refugee and Migrant Health”. Available here
2. International Organization for Migration, World Migration Report 2020 (Geneva, 2019), pp 2, 19, 22. Available here.
3. The office serves South East Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. For more information, see the Regional Office website.
4. International Organization for Migration, “Key Migration Data 2018. SEEECA 2018: Facts and Figures” (Vienna, IOM Vienna Regional Office, 2018), p. 2.Available here
5. Dilip Ratha et al., “Data release: Remittances to low- and middle-income countries on track to hit $ 551 billion in 2019 and $ 597 billion by 2021”, Blogs de World Bank, October 16, 2019.Available at: https: / /blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/data-release-remittances-low-and-middle-income-countries-track-reach-551-billion-2019.
6. António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, Speech on the occasion of International Migrants Day, December 18, 2020.
The UN Chronicle is not an official document. It is privileged to host senior United Nations officials as well as eminent contributors from outside the United Nations system whose views are not necessarily those of the United Nations. Likewise, the limits and names shown, and the designations used, on maps or articles do not necessarily imply endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations.
Source link
