In 2015, the world reached the mark of more than 244 million migrants and 65 million people in situations of forced displacement. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that, between 2014 and 2018, almost 17,000 people (of whom just over 5,700 bodies have been recovered) who were trying to reach Europe succumbed under the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. These numbers, however, have not always led to the mobilization of humanitarian efforts. On the contrary, they have sparked, for example, security reactions, such as the Italian government's recent decision to unilaterally close its ports to vessels that have rescued and taken with them asylum seekers. On the other side of the Atlantic, a few days ago, a peaceful caravan of Central American migrants was met at the Mexican border with the United States by a blockade of Mexican police and tear gas bombs thrown by US agents, who, let's not forget, are under the command of an administration that, a few months ago, scandalously separated more than 3,000 families, removing children from their parents, who were detained for being in an irregular migratory condition. Unilateral actions by states, focused mainly on intensifying control of access to their territories, have caused chaos, human rights violations and an increase in the number of migrant deaths.
The design of a state's migration policy is always the result of the exercise of its sovereign prerogative. Even in the European Union, the bloc's member states reserve for themselves a wide margin of unilateral decision on the subject. Since the intensification of the number of refugees and migrants in 2015, however, the United Nations (UN) has sought to agree on a series of instruments, which bring together non-binding principles aimed at making the management of international migration more rational and humane. Despite the nationalist hype, a state's adoption of these declarations or pacts in no way restricts its sovereignty.
The first step towards establishing international migration governance was taken by the United Nations General Assembly, which in 2016 adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. The Declaration was approved by 193 countries that took into account not only the staggering numbers of refugees and migrants in the world, but also the need to recognize their great importance in actions to achieve the goals set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The New York Declaration contains a series of commitments made by states to refugees and migrants (and to each of these groups separately). Among these commitments, the Declaration provides in its text for the creation of two Covenants: one on the establishment of standards for safe, orderly and regular migration; the other on refugees, which is being drawn up under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
On December 10 and 11, a United Nations summit will be held in Marrakech, Morocco, with a view to approving the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. The main objective of this Pact is to establish principles of global governance that facilitate the organization of the management of migratory flows by sending and receiving states.
There is, however, a threat hanging over this UN summit: the withdrawal of several states from adopting the Global Compact, influenced by the intensification of populist and nationalist criticism. In Europe, the reactionary populism directed against immigrants is based, as Sami Naïr states in an article published in El País (03/12/18), not on an inherent xenophobia of European citizens, but on a feeling of "impotence and social abandonment, resulting from unemployment and the indifference of the European Union". Populist parties seek to direct citizens' frustrations and affections against certain "culprits", chosen at their discretion, according to their interests, stimulating hatred, racism and xenophobia.
The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was largely the result of a European demand for concerted solutions to tackle the increase in migration. But rarely has Europe been so divided on an issue. In the name of the "German interest", Angela Merkel is expected to support the Pact, although the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) is under strong pressure to the contrary. In France, Macron also supports it under a barrage of criticism from Marine Le Pen. Italy is unlikely to take part in the Morocco Conference. The governments of Belgium and Slovakia are divided. The Czech Republic, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia and Poland have distanced themselves from the Pact. Outside Europe, Australia and Israel don't support it either. And Trump's United States didn't even take part in its negotiation process.
The main reasons why these states resist joining the Global Compact are the fear that it will limit the exercise of their sovereignty when it comes to adopting national migration policies and the fear that it will lead to the realization of a human right to migration. However, none of this can be inferred from the content or objectives of the Global Compact. It does not restrict the exercise of sovereignty from either a formal or material point of view: formally, the Pact is not an international treaty, but a non-binding instrument that contains guiding principles for states in their quest for rational migration management; moreover, in its paragraph 15, it expressly recognizes the sovereign right of states to establish their own migration policy. Nor does the Global Compact support a human right to migration. Rather, it recognizes the human rights of migrants, which must be guaranteed in the process of managing migration.
Louise Arbour, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Migration, in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro (29/12/2018), defends the Pact as an instrument that proposes to "reduce the factors that push people to leave their country, support host countries, fight illegal immigration and human trafficking more effectively, promote legal migration routes and help migrants in vulnerable situations".
O Brazil has already nodded positively in favor of promoting and implementing the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in a recent joint statement by the Brazilian and Spanish Foreign Ministers (11/10/2018). The country has only around 0.3% immigrants in its population, yet more than 1.5 million Brazilians live abroad. Humane, rational and cooperative management is in Brazil's interest both as a country receiving and sending migratory flows. Furthermore, joining the Global Compact will increase the importance of Brazilian opinion and participation in the international governance of migration. With a reduced capacity to unilaterally impose its interests on the powers that be, Brazil's strategy is to favor multilateral arrangements, reinforcing international agreements, even if they only contain guiding principles for signatory states, such as the Global Compact on Migration. It is through norms and multilateralism - and not through continence and automatic adherence to the political choices of any power - that Brazil is best able to ensure that its sovereign interests are taken into account, which is why its participation in the Global Compact and in the governance of international migration is so important.
Rickson Rios Figueira holds a PhD in Sociology and Law from the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), is a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Migration Studies (NIEM-UFRJ), a visiting researcher at the Institute of International Relations at PUC-Rio and a professor at the Federal University of Roraima (UFRR).