Credit: IOM/Gema Cortés
 
In a world characterised by economic crises, conflicts, and natural disasters, the uptick in migration is proving to be one of the most important geopolitical phenomena of the century. The adverse effects of climate change and environmental degradation are increasingly driving people from their homes--IOM

By Lansana Gberie
GENEVA, Switzerland, Oct 3 2023 (IPS)

On 14 June, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued his flagship annual report, Global Trends: Forced Displacement 2022. It states that by the end of 2022, the number of people displaced by war, persecution, violence and human rights abuse had dramatically increased by 19.1 million — the biggest increase on record — reaching a total of 108.4 million.

This record-breaking displacement resulted mainly from the war in Ukraine and the eruption of conflict in Sudan. Ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, in Africa’s Sahel region and elsewhere also contributed, as did prominent natural disasters related to climate change.

Rush to conflict, slow to solution

In the report, High Commissioner Filippo Grandi was right to blame this tragedy on people who “are far too quick to rush to conflict, and way too slow to find solutions,” leading to such “devastation, displacement and anguish for each of the millions of people forcibly uprooted from their homes.”

On Monday 15 May 2023, the Member States of IOM elected Ms. Amy Pope as its new Director General.

Yet, to blame the perpetrators of such conflicts is not to absolve the rest of the world for responding so appallingly to such displacements. This is inevitably irregular or illegal migration. On the day that the UN report was released, as many as 600 men, women and children perished needlessly when a human smuggler’s boat, Adriana, capsized off the coast of Greece.

In the following month of July, news photographs showed 27 bodies of African migrants along with dozens of inebriated figures stranded along the Libya-Tunisia border. A few weeks later on 21 August, Human Rights Watch reported that border guards of an important Middle Eastern country had carried out “widespread and systematic” abuse of hundreds of African migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross its border between March 2022 and June 2023.

That country has rejected the allegation as false. If the evidence proves otherwise, then we could consider this an extreme example of “a kind of grim and tragic monotony,” the phrase used by the American Quaker humanitarian Louis W. Schneider in 1954 to characterize the world’s aggressive attitude toward unwanted migrants.

Lansana Gberie

Perhaps more pernicious, because more subtle and more easily replicable elsewhere, is the growing practice by wealthy countries of providing training, logistical coordination and other high-tech support to poorer countries so that those poorer countries can forcibly prevent migration to the rich ones.

Linked to such pernicious support and coordination is the recent migrant boat tragedy off the coast of West Africa, after patrol boats chased a fishing boat carrying migrants. Maneuvering in pitch darkness to escape, the migrant boat lost its way and struck rocks off a popular beachfront in Dakar, Senegal, killing at least 16 people.

No doubt those countries have legitimate, and probably even humane, reasons for their robust efforts to stop this kind of irregular and dangerous migration: thousands of young Africans have died over the years trying this perilous route. And state sovereignty requires secure borders.

Still, it is hard to shake off the impression that staunching illegal migrant flows is a greater priority than helping desperate young people — often displaced by conflict and ecological disasters — to more secure and prosperous destinations.

The issue is not just a matter of moral consideration. It is a hugely complex problem, clearly one of the great global challenges of our unequal world, and one without an easy fix. Even so, the world must find a more humane and effective way of addressing it.

Humane management of migration

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) was founded in 1951 to “help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people.”

The vision is ennobling, and IOM takes its mission seriously. The organization is currently made up of 175 member states, operating in 180 countries around the world (including my own, Sierra Leone). It employs thousands of people from diverse backgrounds in fulfilling this mission.

In March this year, as chair of the governing council of IOM, I visited two African countries where IOM has a significant presence. My first stop was Morocco — Rabat and Casablanca — where, during two days in March this year, I met with migrants, staff of IOM, senior government officials, diplomats and civil society organizations working with migrants.

Morocco is a critical migration hub — a source country, a transit point, and increasingly, a destination country for migrants. It combines border security arrangements with richer countries to its north with its own efforts to accommodate migrants, though perhaps with a lopsided provision of resources between the two.

Because of Morocco’s strategic location, the African Union in 2020 established the African Migration Observatory (AMO) in Rabat. Headed by an Egyptian diplomat, Ambassador Amira Elfadi, the observatory could potentially assist in monitoring events such as the tragedy at the Tunisia-Libya border. But when I met Ms. Elfadi, she had no staff yet. The AMO needs support for operations as extensive and energetic as those in Kenya.

The most effective combination

I had wide-ranging conversations with IOM staff in both countries, in town halls organised by local IOM leaders. Passion for the work of the organisation was very strong. Passion combined with strong technical knowledge and an eagerness to engage with migrant communities and local authorities at all levels — which I found stronger in Kenya — makes for greater effectiveness.

In May, by resounding vote and unanimous acclamation, IOM elected Amy Pope as its director general. She is a resourceful and energetic American who embodies this combination of passion, knowledge, and enthusiasm for engaging with staff at all levels, with all governments and local authorities, and with migrant communities.

A veteran migrant defender, Ms. Pope is the first woman to head this important organization since its founding 72 years ago. In her vision statement, she committed to a “people-centred” approach, defining this as a commitment to “the migrants, vulnerable people, and the communities IOM serves, IOM’s member states and its workforce.”

Since becoming deputy director of IOM over two years ago, Ms. Pope has consistently pursued this vision with a passion rare in the staid corridors of Geneva power offices. She is now one of a handful of pioneering women to lead important international organizations in Geneva, which hosts a few dozen. All of them assumed their positions within the past four years. It has been a refreshing change.

A novel leadership of a global organization grappling with a large global challenge tends to come with high expectations. It is both the attraction and a pitfall of progressive change. Either way, it will not detract from Ms. Pope’s commitment to posit that she will be as successful only in so far as the world wants her to succeed.

With the extraordinarily grim developments heralding her tenure, the world must embrace her “people-centred” approach. A failure to do so could mean unending calamities like the ones described above.

Dr. Lansana Gberie is Sierra Leone’s Permanent Representative in Geneva. He is Chair of the Governing Council of International Organization for Migration.

IPS UN Bureau

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Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala took over as new WTO Director-General, 1 March 2021. Credit: Africa Renewal, United Nations

By Lansana Gberie
GENEVA, Mar 9 2021 (IPS)

When on 15 February the chair of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) General Council, Ambassador David Walker of New Zealand, announced that Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala would be the new Director-General, the mood among delegates was of relief.

Dr. Okonjo-Iweala commanded overwhelming support from the start of the selection process in July 2020, but her historic elevation—as the first African and the first woman to become Director-General of the 26-year-old trade organisation—was by no means certain only a few weeks prior.

“Without the recent swift action by the Biden-Harris administration to join the consensus of the membership on my candidacy,” the new Director-General said in her acceptance statement, delivered via video link, “we would not be here today.”

This plain statement of fact underlines the challenges she will likely face. It is also indicative of the paralyzing difficulties experienced by the world’s main trade arbiter in recent years, where key decisions are made by consensus among over 160 members.

So, what can Africa gain from an African Director-General of the world’s premier trade organization?

This question was never openly asked during the selection process, in part because as well as being an African and a woman, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s qualifications—Harvard-educated economist, top World Bank official, longest-serving Finance Minister of Nigeria (Africa’s largest economy), and Foreign Minister—towered above her rivals.

But the question will likely become a point of conversation during her tenure.

Lansana Gberie

Some will try to use it as a benchmark for evaluating her performance in office. That will make no sense. For the past 20 years, no round of trade negotiations at the WTO has been successful.

The WTO’s dispute resolution mechanism—the Appellate Body—has been stymied, including through the blocking of all its new appointees by the previous US administration, a decision that should be rescinded.

But there are important areas where the Director-General, with her political clout and proven leadership skills as a reformer, can lead “from behind… to achieve results,” as Dr. Okonjo-Iweala herself noted in her acceptance statement.

In that statement, she highlighted as a top priority an inclusive and effective approach to COVID-19 vaccine distribution, which surely must include an agreement to suspend intellectual-property protection for vaccines and other vital drugs to enable their mass production and distribution in poor countries.

This is known as the TRIPS Waiver proposal, an initiative of India and South Africa that now has more than 50 co-sponsors.

Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, as chair of the vaccine alliance Gavi and one of the African Union special envoys for the continent’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been consistently passionate about this issue and has called for the rejection of “vaccine nationalism and protectionism.”

In post-pandemic recovery, Africa will focus on operationalizing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which is expected to connect some 1.2 billion people across 55 countries with a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion.

The trade pact will unify and amplify Africa’s voice in urging the WTO to create a vision that reflects the continent’s economic aspirations.

The AfCFTA itself signals a preference for a rules-based multilateralism, which aligns with the WTO’s ideals. Therefore, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala should actively cheerlead for the AfCFTA and canvass for necessary technical support for its successful implementation.

Perhaps more difficult but vital to African and other developing economies is improving market access for their agricultural products. This access is severely limited in part because of the huge distorting subsidies that wealthy nations provide their farmers.

There have been encouraging overtures from European countries and Australia to African diplomats to help mitigate this problem, but it will need the leadership of the WTO to give the initiative the momentum it needs.

Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, who has stressed that trade must be centred around people and focused on economic development and reducing global inequities, is singularly positioned to lead this effort.

Negotiations around fisheries, which have persisted for years at the WTO, are an equally urgent concern for Africa. To date, some members even refuse to agree on what constitutes ‘fish.’

Wealthier nations lavish subsidies on their fisheries sectors, leading to over-enhanced capacity, which enables their fishing boats to infringe upon the sovereign rights of poorer countries in Africa. African-caught fish, already limited as a result of such encroachment, stand little chance of gaining market access in wealthy countries.

During her rounds of meetings in Geneva before her selection, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala advanced an important concept that was widely praised by African diplomats – trade finance.

As someone who followed her during those weeks of intense consultations, I was struck by the fact that no other candidate spoke about this issue. Providing financial and technical support particularly to least developed economies to export agricultural and fisheries products to richer countries can advance both trade and development.

Negotiations on such support for the cotton sector within WTO have, like those relating to fisheries, generated positive statements of support but no real action yet. African members have recently raised the issue of a WTO Joint Action Plan to provide support for the development of cotton by-products in poor countries.

This should be uncontroversial; it is certainly less contentious than intellectual property rights, for example. It merits urgent support.

Its realization, in addition to actions on agriculture and fisheries, will be the kind of incremental progress that will help reduce poverty and boost global trade.

For many African countries, it will constitute the kind of reform that would make multilateral cooperation – and the great honour to the continent represented by the elevation of a highly distinguished African trailblazer – truly meaningful.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

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Excerpt:

The scars of war in Tripoli's Abu Salim district. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

By Lansana Gberie
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 16 2018 (IPS)

Perhaps no major political or humanitarian disaster is as overlooked as the ongoing crisis in Libya. For example, although the New York Times in September 2017 published a total of seven articles mentioning Libya, only one of them touched on the violence ripping it apart. Even the Times’ gesture merely highlighted the latest permutation of the US government’s foreign military decisions.

The article, by Eric Schmitt, cited the Pentagon’s Africa Command and stated that the United States military had carried out a half-dozen “precision strikes” on an Islamic State training camp in Libya, killing 17 militants in the first American air strike in “the strife-torn North African nation” since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president.

Two of the Times’s September 2017 articles on Libya are about the Trump administration’s travel ban, which affects Libyans, among others. One is about Libyans seeking asylum in Germany only to find “hatred,” and the other is about the threats, including racism and violence, that sub-Saharan African migrants using Libya as a route to Europe face in that country.

Contrast the current media coverage of Libya with that of the period just before the NATO military action that led to the squalid death of Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi. In February 2011 alone—a month before the US, Britain and France began bombing that country to oust Gaddafi—the New York Times carried well over a hundred articles on Libya. One editorial, on 24 February 2011, confidently asserted that “unless some way is found to stop him, Gaddafi will slaughter hundreds or even thousands of his own people in his desperation to hang on to power.”

However, months after the dictator’s enemies, aided by Western powers, had overrun the country, the same paper ran a telling story by veteran correspondent Rod Nordland entitled “Libya Counts More Martyrs than Bodies.” “Where are the dead?” he asked, referring to the mass killings that Gaddafi had been accused of planning. No evidence of such killings was to be found anywhere in the country.

The “impression of a now well-rooted political economy of predation is palpable, as if the country were fueling its own crisis with its own resources to the benefit of the few and the frustration of the many.”

Ghassan Salamé, special representative of the secretary-general and head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya
Here’s what is currently happening in Libya, which is unlikely to be covered in corporate media.

On 28 August 2017, Ghassan Salamé, the special representative of the secretary-general and head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, told the Security Council that on his first night in the capital, Tripoli, after taking the job, “I fell asleep to the protracted staccato of gunfire.” Civilians, he said, “are killed or injured across Libya as a result of sporadic armed clashes… Thousands are also detained for prolonged periods of time, many with no prospects of a fair trial.”

Libya’s current state is one of near anarchy. A UN-led initiative resulted in a Libyan Political Agreement in December 2015 and a so-called Government of National Accord (GNA), bringing together two warring “governments,” the Council of Deputies (elected in 2014) and the Islamist General National Congress (GNC).

The GNA is backed by the UN and is internationally recognised. Its authority, however, is both unclear and limited; the country’s capital, Tripoli, the haven of the GNC, is still contested and riven by violence.

The components of the GNA still compete for authority, legitimacy and control over state resources and infrastructure. In effect, there are still two competing, even warring, governments in the country, and there is no leader commanding anything approaching national clout, let alone support or legitimacy.

Oil production in Libya reached 1 million barrels a day in early October 2017, far below the 1.6 million it produced before the crisis. Salamé said that the “impression of a now well-rooted political economy of predation is palpable, as if the country were fueling its own crisis with its own resources to the benefit of the few and the frustration of the many.”

When a convoy of UN personnel was attacked with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades on 28 June 2017 by militant groups in the country, Salamé reported that the active “presence of ISIS, Al Qaida–affiliated terrorist groups, foreign fighters and mercenaries, the trafficking of arms and the cross-border black market economy are challenges which extend across Libya’s borders and impact its neighbours and the wider international community.” Yet this was not a major news item in mainstream US media.

In June, UN investigators reported that terrorists, militants, mercenaries, and partisans have been targeting the two “governments” in the country, as well as residential areas, with improvised explosive devices, causing the death and injury of many civilians. The investigators reported summary executions of civilians, mass killings and bodies found with “bullet wounds and signs of torture.”

Kidnappings are routine, and so is the “arbitrary detention and torture of journalists and activists involving Haytham al-Tajuri, the commander of the Tripoli Revolutionaries Brigade. Armed groups affiliated with the National Salvation Government were involved in several cases of kidnapping and torture,” the investigators stated in their report.

Thousands have perished in the near-anarchic violence that these multiple groups and their foreign backers perpetuate, and an estimated 435,000 of Libya’s population of just over six million are internally displaced.

September ended with the report of the killing of 26 people and the wounding of 170 by rival armed groups in the city of Sabratha after two weeks of fighting.

In October, CNN reported slave trading in Libya, with a footage of black Africans being auctioned for around $400 each. The footage caused the African Union (AU) chairman, president Alpha Conde of Guinea, to demand prosecutions for crimes against humanity. He condemned the resurgence of a “despicable” trade “from another era.”

Why no action?

So why isn’t the world focused on Libya following the humanitarian catastrophe it has become since Gaddafi’s death? Last year the United Nations high commissioner for human rights estimated that more than 9,000 people were detained without trial in the country.

Sectarian killings are now commonplace, black migrants are brutalised and in some cases summarily executed by militia groups, and last year a report by the United Nations high commissioner for human rights estimated that more than nine thousand people were being detained without trial in facilities operated by the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Combating Illegal Migration of the Ministry of the Interior. It is now clear that those who ousted Mr. Gaddafi wanted a regime change but were unprepared for its consequences.

The latest Security Council resolution on Libya, adopted on 14 September, made a point of reiterating support for the GNA “as the sole legitimate government of Libya, with Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj as the leader of the Presidency Council.”

The resolution also expressed the Security Council’s “strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of Libya,” a country that, before its so-called revolution in 2011, was one of Africa’s most influential states, a prime actor in the transformation of the Organisation of African Unity into the AU.

Writing in the March/April issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, Ivo Daalder, then the US’s permanent representative to NATO, and James Stavridis, then supreme allied commander Europe, described NATO’s operation in Libya as “a model intervention” that “succeeded in protecting…civilians” from an impending genocide. In fact, it provides a cautionary tale for trigger-happy humanitarians and those the British journalist Simon Jenkins once called “sofa strategists and beltway bombardiers.”

African Union’s role

Libya’s ongoing problems raise questions about the role of the AU, of which Libya was once a prominent member. At the height of NATO’s bombing of Libya, in July 2011, Mauritania’s foreign minister Hamady Ould Hamady briefed the UN Security Council on the AU’s position.

Hamady spoke about the “indescribable suffering of the Libyan population” and then described the AU’s road map to peace: “the immediate cessation of all hostilities; the cooperation of the relevant Libyan authorities in facilitating the effective delivery of humanitarian aid to populations in need; the protection of foreigners, including African migrant workers living in Libya; and the adoption and implementation of the political reforms necessary to eliminate the causes of the current conflict.” The AU road map was routinely shelved as a Security Council document.

The AU could make greater efforts to resolve Libya’s crises. Its Peace and Security Department, which spearheads its efforts to promote peace, security and stability in Africa, is headed by Commissioner Smaïl Chergui from Algeria, a country that in the past played a prominent role in regional mediation efforts.

The current regimes in Libya may not have the same sentimental or rhetorical attachment to the AU that Gaddafi had, but experts believe that the regional body is still uniquely placed, despite the minimal interest displayed in Libya by major powers, to be more actively involved in containing the crises, whose impact has been seen in many of the neighbouring countries of the Sahel and even West Africa.