This side-event to the International Migration Review Forum, co-convened by UNU-CPR, MIDEQ Hub, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, brought together high-level speakers from the UN, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, academia, and civil society to deepen academic and policy understandings of the relationships between migration and inequality, focusing on the implications of these relationships for the implementation of the Global Compact on Migration.
The potential of migration to contribute to the development and delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals is widely acknowledged but remains unrealized, in large part due to intersectional inequalities at the global, national, and local levels that determine who is (and is not) able to migrate and under what conditions. These inequalities, many of which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, are associated with a lack of rights for migrants and their families, difficult, expensive, and sometimes dangerous journeys, and inequitable development outcomes. While the Global Compact on Migration refers to issues of gender equality, it does not explicitly address the relationships between inequality and migration more generally, or the ways in which inequalities in the outcomes of migration can be exacerbated by policy approaches that decontextualize migration from broader processes of economic, social, and political change.
The objective of this event was to highlight the relationships between migration and inequality in three very different geographical contexts (Africa, Asia, and South America), drawing out the implications of these inequalities for the effective implementation of the Global Compact on Migration.
