Africa, 7th July, 2020
On 7th July 2020, a panel discussion was jointly conducted by Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism [GRFDT], Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA), and Cross Regional Center for Refugees and Migrants (CCRM),on the topic, “Global and Regional Migration Governance During COVID-19 Pandemic”.
Charles Obila is a Migration Officer at IGAD Secretariat,currently researching on Migration Trends and Dynamics across the Horn of Africa to determine the humanitarian needs and mitigate the resultant negative effects on mobile populations in the region.
Mr Obila spoke about the African perspective especially of the IGAD countries in the global migration governance discourse. He said that Migration is a “Means of Survival” for majority of Africans today. With hardly any expanded opportunities back home, Africa sees vast mixed migration where people move for better alternatives both in terms of employment and livelihoods.
Impact of COVID-19 on Migration-
Migration in Africa is extremely Dynamic with maximum migration directed towards the EU, Gulf countries and southern part of Africa. However, post COVID-19, the “Fear of the foreigner” narrative has spiralled out of control with people largely seeing migrants as foreigners who will facilitate the spread the virus.
A few major challenges faced by African migrants abroad were – inability to move back even after losing their jobs, voluntary returns and deportations, major decline in remittances and loss of livelihoods and income.In fact, the urban migrants were the most affected leaving governments in a tough spot to coordinate their returns with adequate health care infrastructure in place.
Way forward
With the onset of COVID-19, Africa saw major internal flows from urban to rural areas with people seeing rural areas as safer locations to shield themselves from the virus. Hence, the leaders of IGAD countries adopted regional health responsive strategies that specifically mentioned the integration of vulnerable people including migrants and refugees in their health-care responses.
The Support of external partners like the EU, Sweden etc.to ensure no one is left behind and integrate migrants in their current locations showed major signs of solidarity and internal cooperation in addressing the COVID-19 problem.
Mr Obila stated that he saw the need for international cooperation and multilateralism in the recovery and post recovery periods of the health emergency. This is so because the pressure to migrate will always remain and hence governments must be proactive and enhance migration governance measures. He further said that the 2015 migration crisis did not spiral out of control because of the number of migrants but because of the poor government approaches in handling the situations. Hence, if leaders today do not adopt an action oriented approach, migrants will be forced to utilise irregular ways, exposing them to smugglers and trafficking in the post COVID-19 world order.
Therefore, it is imperative that the heads of state ensure that Africans have decent opportunities back home or “are able to move out of their vulnerabilities into homes of self-reliance”. He thus concluded his talk with saying that existing protocols like the Continental free movement regime and Continental Free Trade regime will also need to be transformed with the changing dynamics of the post COVID-19 world and governments across the world must ensure easy and migrant friendly travel regimes to corroborate benefits for all especially the vulnerable migrants and refugees.
Writer Details- UjjwalaLakhanpal, is a final year student of International relations and economics at Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, Gandhinagar. Her areas of interest include Conflict Studies, Asian geopolitics, International migrations and the Middle East. Twitter Id- UjjwalaLakhanpal @UjjwalaLp