{"id":3924,"date":"2019-04-17T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T07:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nccr-onthemove.ch\/?p=3924"},"modified":"2019-04-17T09:44:50","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T07:44:50","slug":"un-global-compact-for-safe-orderly-and-regular-migration-gcm-an-effective-instance-of-multi-level-governance-or-catalyst-for-externalization-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/un-global-compact-for-safe-orderly-and-regular-migration-gcm-an-effective-instance-of-multi-level-governance-or-catalyst-for-externalization-part-2\/?lang=fr","title":{"rendered":"UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) \u2013 an Effective Instance of Multi-Level Governance or Catalyst for Externalization? (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the first part of this blog post, we analyzed why the GCM\u2019s vision of \u2018interconnecting\u2019 migration-specific to migration-related policies delivers gains, including more room for negotiated outcomes, while at the same time increasing the risk of watering down human rights protection. This second part evaluates the evolution of institutions involved in implementing, monitoring and reviewing the international cooperation framework of the GCM. Its aim is to offer some non-conclusive answers to the question whether the GCM is a \u2018governance actor\u2019 in its own right or whether it merely provides an infrastructure for strengthening the \u2018governance capacity\u2019 of states over international migrations, and what type of governance it propagates \u2013 multi-level or global. To come up with some conclusion means to rely closely on the notion of \u2018multi-actor\u2019 participation in the GCM and the role of regions and local bodies therein.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Between the two zero drafts (February and March 2018) and the three revised drafts, but also between the final draft of 11 July 2018 and the intergovernmentally negotiated and agreed outcome of the GCM of 13 July 2018, there seems to have been a big shift regarding the roles of non-state actors. Whereas it was clear from the beginning that non-state actors, including INGOs, academia, philanthropy, business, and trade unions, were not invited in the drafting stage, they could issue statements-to-the-floor at the six informal thematic meetings in 2017 leading up to the Zero drafts. For many, this amounted to an implicit promise that their participation would become more important. Yet, the final draft dissipated many of these hopes by relegating non-state actors\u2019 role to a mere participatory one in a process of entirely state-led negotiations, implementation and review.<\/p>\n

The Global Forum for Migration and Development (GFMD):
\nA Catalyst for Multi-Level Governance in the GCM? <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Global Forum for Migration and Development (GFMD), established in 2007, is an equally state-led, informal and non-binding process. Nonetheless, it provides venues for the private sector, civil society, the UN system, and other stakeholders to create consensus and share expertise, including through its flagship tool, the Platform for Partnerships (PfP). The GFMD has been highly visible since the outset of the GCM negotiations (see UN General Assembly 2016). It has participated in all the GCM tools for non-state actors and was allotted a special slot in the Special Meeting on the GCM with Co-Facilitators and the Special Representative to the UN Secretary General (19 June 2018, Geneva).<\/p>\n

In acknowledgment of the strong role the GFMD played in the negotiations as the \u2018clearing station\u2019 on civil society matters (Rother 2018), it has become the poster child of civil society involvement in the GCM\u2019s implementation (Art. 51). Firstly, it has provided the space for annual reporting to the International Migration Review civil society\u2019s \u2018informal\u2019 assessments on the GCM\u2019s implementation and any practices, findings and approaches it collected (Art. 42 and 47; Piper 2019). Secondly, via the PfP, the GFMD should have become a venue to \u2018foster multi-stakeholder partnerships around specific policy issues\u2019 to inform the UN\u2019s Capacity Building Mechanism (CBM), which is part of the UN Network on Migration dedicated to overseeing implementation, but also monitoring and review. Not only is the network\u2019s dual role in law-making and review problematic in terms of good governance, how the GFDM now sits in-between the voice of migrants and civil society and the Network, respectively, can be criticized as \u2018filtering\u2019 content (Art. 43) of the International Review. Others applaud that the GFMD\u2019s quasi-tripartite structure (states, civil society and hopefully business) could guarantee a \u2018stepping-stone\u2019 towards more multi-level governance in the GCM (Rother 2018). Regardless of the role of the GFMD, the \u2018multi-stakeholder\u2019 approach of the Zero Draft got lost in the Final Draft, which reinstates a \u2018state-led approach with the participation of all relevant stakeholders (Lavenex 2018).<\/p>\n

Sub-State Level: A Cooperation without Effective Operational Principles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike for civil society and the GFMD, the Final Draft of the GCM treats sub-state governmental entities, including local authorities, regional units or cross-regional dialogues, including the Regional Consultative Processes, quite marginally. Whereas the Zero Drafts considered creating a Regional Migration Review Forum (Art. 45 Zero Draft), this idea was removed (see Art. 50 Final Draft), and the role of regional institutions was couched in a very unspecific language.<\/p>\n

Even if Objective 3 GCM systemically encourages \u2018bilateral, regional, and international cooperation\u2019 between States to exchange data, trends and information (GIGA 2018), a clear commitment to subsidiarity, mutual supportiveness or any other principle in view of organizing the relationships among these multiple territorial-functional levels, is missing. Hence, we argue that in the GCM, the territorial levels generally connect via some kind of cooperation, without an operational principle for organizing the interrelationships. As the levels fail to effectively \u2018connect\u2019, or \u2018talk to each other\u2019, a \u2018programmatic\u2019 or \u2018aspirational\u2019 language goes missing, so that governance capacity of the GCM can be questioned.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the GCM interconnects different themes and rules of international migration law. For example, national integration and domestic social welfare policies become part of the external dimension of migration. Also here, it leaves open the rationale for \u2018interconnectedness\u2019 and fails to install sufficient guarantees against its misuse. If refashioned as a tool of conditionality by State practice, this \u2018interconnectedness\u2019 may cast non-migration specific policies \u2013 such as trade, aid, visa \u2013 as kickbacks to reward countries of the Global South that are willing to sign up onto the externalization of migration policies by border shifting, pull-backs and other non-arrival cooperative strategies. If unchecked, \u2018interconnectedness\u2019 may become a catalyst for externalization and, thus, an antagonist to \u2018good\u2019 governance and the beneficiaries of issue-linkages, who will be unable to benefit from the policy proximities between visa and labor migration, between trade preferences and opening of legal pathways (Vitiello 2018).<\/p>\n

In the final analysis, the GCM embodies a system of objectives and commitments rotating around multiple UN bodies, e.g. the network led by the IOM, the international review body, and the newly minted UN-IOM. This choice of UN-centric self-organization brings the regime closer to one of global, rather than multilevel governance. Its vision consists in promoting sufficient cooperation (and thus strengthen members\u2019 governance capacities) to overcome the free rider problem around international migrations (Micinski and Weiss 2017). Depending on whether and how the members will endorse the upgraded IOM and the international migration network, there is still hope for multilevel governance in this UN-itary structure, one, which takes peripheric actors seriously.<\/p>\n

As an \u2018international cooperation framework\u2019, the GCM\u2019s basic ambition was to make the world of migration law and governance \u2018whole\u2019 again \u2013 to act as the antidote to the formerly fragmented tools rotating around the setting sun of state sovereignty. Whereas the GCM \u2018does not create new rules but reformulates existing ones\u2019, the GCM \u2018restates\u2019 (Chetail 2019) the laws of international migration by extracting practices, understandings, transnational laboratories, bilateral agreements from the one-dimensional gravitational pull of states and implanting these into a new, UN-driven planetary system. It is packaged, for now, in an \u2018interim\u2019 format of interconnected actionable commitments, reviewed by a mix of UN bodies and the GFMD representing civil society and yet to be determined regional institutions. It represents a 360\u2019 vision of migration awaiting domestic and regional implementation and deeper legitimization of its infrastructure so it can deploy the entire tractions of a fully developed international regime.<\/p>\n

Marion Panizzon<\/a> is a Visiting Fellow at the World Trade Institute, University of Bern and an Associated Researcher of the nccr \u2013 on the move Project Migration Governance through Trade Mobilities<\/a>. She co-led the nccr \u2013 on the move project From Traditional to New Migration: Challenges to the International Legal Migration Regime<\/a> and was a senior researcher at the Institute of Public Law at the University of Berne.<\/em><\/p>\n

Daniela Vitiello is Research Fellow in European Union Law at Tuscia University of Viterbo, Lecturer at the University of Florence, and a member of the Coordinating Committee of the ESIL Interest Group on Migration and Refugee Law. From 2015 to 2017, Daniela was nccr \u2013 on the move Visiting Fellow at the University of Bern (Spring Term 2017) and Postdoc Researcher at \u201cRoma Tre\u201d University.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a shortened version of a post originally published on 4 March 2019 on the blog \u201cEJIL Talk<\/a>\u201d in a symposium of the ESIL Interest Group on Migration and Refugee Law symposium on The UN Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees: The Twin Peaks?<\/a> managed by the European Journal of International Law.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read also Part I of this blog contribution<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

References:
\n– Atak, Idil and Delphine Nakache (2018). Blogpost, GCM Commentary: Objective 7.\u00a0Address and reduce vulnerabilities in migration<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a030.10.2018, RLI Blogpost on Refugee Law and Forced Migration.
\n– Chetail, Vincent (2018). Making Migration Great Again<\/em>, Presentation, The Graduate Institute, Geneva.
\n– Guild, Elspeth and Stefanie Grant (2017). Migration Governance in the UN: What is the Global Compact and What does it mean?<\/em> Queen Mary University of London, School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 252\/2017.
\n– Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas, Elspeth Guild, Violeta Moreno-Lax, Marion Panizzon and Isobel Roele (2017). What is a Compact? Migrants\u2019 Rights and State Responsibilities Regarding the Design of the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration<\/em>\u2019. In cooperation with Raoul Wallenberg Institute.
\n– GIGA (2018).\u00a0Identifying the Role of Regions within the Global Compact for Migration<\/a>, GIGA Talk – Lectures and Discussion, 22.11.2018, Berlin.
\n– Lavenex, Sandra (2018). Blogpost, GCM Commentary: Implementation, Follow-up and Review<\/a>, 25.10.2018, RLI Blog on Refugee Law and Forced Migration.
\n– Micinski, Nicholas and Thomas Weiss (2017). Global Migration Governance: Beyond Coordination and Crisis. In G. Ziccardi Capaldo (ed.) The Global Community Yearbook of International Law and Jurisprudence<\/em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
\n– Mixed Migration Platform (2018). Assessment of the Zero Draft of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration<\/a>.
\n– Panizzon, Marion (2018). Global Compact for Migration: eine Chance f\u00fcr die politische Koh\u00e4renz? Almanach der Entwicklungspolitik<\/em>, 2018\/19, CARITAS: Lucerne, 197-210.
\n– Piper, Nicola (2018). The Global Compact on Migration, Global Social Policy 18(3),\u00a0<\/em>323-324.
\n– Rother, Stefan (2018). The Global Forum on Migration and Development as a venue of state socialisation: a stepping stone for multi-level migration governance?<\/a>, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies<\/em>, 44, online.
\n– Spagnolo, Andrea (2019). \u201cWe are tidying up\u201d: The Global Compact on Migration and its Interaction with International Human Rights Law<\/a><\/em>, EJIL Talk, 1.03.2019, noting how non-refoulement and access to justice are missing out from the Final Draft.
\n– UN General Assembly, In safety and dignity: addressing large movements of refugees and migrants, UN Doc. A\/70\/59 of 21 April 2016.
\n– UN General Assembly, Modalities for the intergovernmental negotiations of the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration, UN Doc. A\/RES\/71\/280 of 17 April 2017.
\n– UN General Assembly, Report of the SRSG on Migration, also referred to as the \u201cSutherland Report\u201d, UN Doc. A\/71\/728 of 3 February 2017.
\n– Vitiello, Daniela (2019). \u2018Agencification as a Key Component of the EU Externalisation Toolkit. Observations on a Silent Escape from the Rule of Law\u2019. In Sergio Carrera, Arie Pieter Leonhard den Hertog, Marion Panizzon, Dora Kostakopoulou (eds). The EU External Policies on Migration, Borders and Asylum in an Era of Large Flows: Policy Transfers or Intersecting Policy Universes?<\/em> The Hague: Brill, 125-152.
\n– Z\u00fcrn, Michael (2012). \u2018Gobal Governance as Multi-level Governance\u2019. In Daniel-Levi Faur (ed.). Oxford Handbook of Governance<\/em>, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 80-102.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the first part of this blog post, we analyzed why the GCM\u2019s vision of \u2018interconnecting\u2019 migration-specific to migration-related policies delivers gains, including more room for negotiated outcomes, while at the same time increasing the risk of watering down human rights protection. This second part evaluates the evolution of institutions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[235,256,252,237,323,240],"coauthors":[349,366],"class_list":["post-3924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politique","tag-admission-fr","tag-law-case-law-fr","tag-human-rights-fr","tag-borders-fr","tag-policy-research-fr","tag-civil-society-fr"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3924"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3959,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3924\/revisions\/3959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3924"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}