IMA Statement on the 5th GFMD

International Migrants Alliance (IMA)
01 December 2011

Since its inception up to its current fifth run, the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) has never professed genuine concern for migrant workers and their families.

In fact, it has only been faithful to its neoliberal design of using migration as a tool to perpetuate the domination of the world’s superpowers – chiefly the United States – and sustain the unjust world order through the continued commodification of migrant labor and the modern-day slavery of migrant workers.

As the world continues to be mired in crisis, migration is becoming more and more important for the sending countries who are increasingly relying on the revenues generated by the labor export industry and the remittances that migrants send to their families to keep their economies afloat and as well as for the more powerful countries who need continuous sources of cheap labor for their industries and their service sectors.

The GFMD’s pandering to the neoliberal globalization design of imperialists can be gleaned from the processes it has undertaken and the thrusts it set forth in its meetings since 2007. In 2007, the Brussels GFMD set the framework and the system of operation of the forum. By the next year in the Philippines, the forum chose to pay lip service to the rights and empowerment of migrants yet the result was telling of the low level of interest as its recommendations did not include concrete measures to address the most glaring of migrant’s issues. In Athens, the overarching agenda made clear that the GFMD was fast tracking the systematization of migration in line with development plans of both sending and receiving countries of migrant labor. Last year in Mexico, the GFMD focused its attention in strengthening partnerships through bilateral trade agreements. This year, it looks on how migration policies will be integrated to national development policies.

But the drive for nationalization and even regionalization of the GFMD also indicates that as a global meeting, the GFMD appears to also be losing its legitimacy and significance. Powerful countries need their agenda on migration to be put into action as the crisis rages on. The GFMD is merely an informal forum where the participation and commitment of states are on a voluntary basis. This is obviously not enough for the crisis is already clear and present and the superpowers are in no way near finding real and effective solution – even cornering of remittance is not enough – out of the economic and political rubble they have buried the world in.

For the grassroots migrants and advocates, the lack of legitimacy of the GFMD as a venue where the situation of migrant workers will be improved and their issues will be address is a forgone conclusion. Since the Manila GFMD, grassroots migrant workers under the banner of the International Migrants Alliance and advocates from grassroots-based CSOs have exposed and opposed the imperialist agenda in the GFMD of commodifying and enslaving migrant workers.

Through the International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR) held parallel to the Manila, Athens and Mexico GFMD, grassroots organizations of migrants around the world posed the biggest challenge to the legitimacy of the GFMD. This year, our friends from Migrante Europe and various Europe-based member organizations of the IMA are organizing a forum and mass demonstration to counter the GFMD as the latter holds its fifth round of talks there.

The GFMD needs to be further exposed to the broadest number of migrant workers. Especially now that the GFMD is trying to regionalize and nationalize its resolutions, the adverse impacts of neoliberal globalization directed migration and development will even be more felt by the grassroots migrants.

In this regard, it is even more crucial for the grassroots migrants to be made aware of the GFMD and from there, take actions. In different countries during this period, members and allies of the IMA are conducting various forms of actions to drumbeat the concrete issues of migrants and expose the inutility of the GFMD in addressing this. More than this, grassroots migrant organizations in many countries are continuing to expose the very essence of GFMD as a tool of imperialists to continue its domination of the world through neoliberal globalization policies and brute force.

To oppose GFMD and its design is to resist commodification and modern-day slavery. To resist commodification and modern-day slavery of migrant workers is to oppose the economic, political and social order that breeds and perpetuates forced migration.

This is the struggle of the migrants. This is the struggle of all the oppressed and exploited people. #

For reference:

Eni Lestari, chairperson

(852) 96081475

Rey Asis, secretariat

(852) 95889491

(Download PDF version below; also included is the IMA critique of the 5th GFMD)