The adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) in 2018 was a widely celebrated, landmark moment in global migration governance. Six years down the line, this article critically explores where we are now with the GCM, why it seems to have lost its energy and is lacking meaningful implementation, and what we can do to revitalize it.
What is the GCM?: A refresher
The GCM is recognized as the first-ever intergovernmentally negotiated agreement on a common approach to managing international migration. The GCM was adopted by Member States at the “Marrakech Conference” on 10-11 December 2018, and then endorsed by the General Assembly the following week, with an overwhelming 152 Member States voting in favour of it.
Despite the GCM not being legally-binding, by creating this cooperative framework, Member States purposefully developed a “blueprint for comprehensive, rights-based migration policies”, centered around multilateralism and international cooperation, and a “collective realization that no single government can effectively govern migration alone, without cooperation”.
The GCM also incorporated a clear and robust set of periodic reviews of its implementation, alternating between Regional Migration Review Forums (RMRFs) – the second round of which is ongoing – and an International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) every two years. The IMRF itself is identified by Member States as “the primary intergovernmental global platform to discuss and share progress on the GCM”. The key outcome of each IMRF is a negotiated Progress Declaration (PD).
The spirit of cooperation: The GCM in 2017-2018
The 24 months of arduous GCM consultations, stock-taking, and negotiations in 2017-2018 culminated in the monumental declaration on that memorable Friday afternoon of 13 July 2018, when the co-facilitators announced that we had arrived at a final GCM draft, ready for adoption. A grand cheer reverberated through the UN hallways, and a long round of standing ovations followed. Then the closing session took on another new and welcomed innovation – non-governmental stakeholders who had played a very active and contributing role throughout the negotiations, were given the opportunity by the co-facilitators to have the last words and make concluding statements, beginning with representatives from civil society, youth, and the private sector, before the negotiations were officially closed.
On that day, everyone in that hall was jubilantly celebrating not just a landmark GCM agreement, but the now heightened understanding and cooperation among all parties, a real spirit of consensus-building – THAT was the real achievement of the two-year process to reach the GCM. Regardless of who we each represented, everyone left the hall that Friday afternoon filled with enthusiasm, excitement and expectation. And so, it was simply expected that we would go forward and collectively build on that strong foundation of collaboration to realize the 23 objectives of the GCM, and then to also normalize and build on this new-found spirit of international cooperation (which not coincidentally also punctuated the GCM as objective 23) for the sake of better migration governance and the protection of migrants’ human rights and their well-being.
Back to the future: Where are we now with the GCM, really?
IMRF 2022: What it was and was not
Leading up to the first edition of the IMRF held in May 2022, it was clear to even the most casual observer that the co-facilitators were very challenged to reach consensus on the PD. At one point, the rounds of negotiations seemed to be held up even around seemingly the simplest text on “water scarcity”, with multiple amendments to the draft being negotiated furiously behind the scenes. Having a consensus PD apparently would be an indication that the GCM was an agreement that governments could still stick with. However, reaching consensus also meant setting a low enough bar with the PD that even the most recalcitrant Member States would be agreeable to it.
Ultimately, there was a consensus PD and it was viewed by many Member States as an important achievement, accompanied with a quiet sigh of relief that the GCM was still intact. However, the formal adoption of the PD was preceded and followed by a long series of countries’ plenary statements and explanations of positions (EOPs), lasting well past the allotted agenda schedule and continuing two weeks later, where dozens of countries went to great effort to clarify their positions, sometimes even overtly disagreeing with the PD text. (See for example Ethiopia’s Statement of Disassociation or Singapore’s EOPs.) In the end, one thing became clear at the conclusion of IMRF 2022 – while there was an applauded consensus around the PD, it also severely lacked a spirit of consensus that had been the hallmark of the GCM negotiations itself back in 2018.
As a result, many of us – particularly within the ranks of civil society closest to the ground where conditions for migrants seem worse than ever – were left scratching our heads on how quickly we had lost that hopeful, positive energy, and that grand spirit of cooperation. A vast number of Member States seemed keener to distance themselves from what they considered contentious aspects of the GCM and the IMRF’s PD, than to roll up their sleeves and find common ground, to work in an ambitious and really cooperative manner. Worst of all, progress for many of the 23 objectives, particularly the more ambitious ones, was severely lacking.
GCM activity vs reality
Today, of course one could still argue that the GCM is well and truly alive. After all, there is a lot of activity built into it – countless working groups and workstreams, an extremely stout Migration Multi-Partner Trust Fund (MPTF) along with a robust list of funded projects, seemingly endless national and regional consultations being fed into the ongoing second round of RMRFs, etc.
But as we all know, activity alone – especially heavily process-oriented activity – does not indicate a healthy GCM. We only need to begin by looking at the 23 objectives and their intended outcomes, and then compare that to the reality facing migrants and migration governance all around us today. To give one particularly tragic example: while objective 7 of the GCM is to address and reduce vulnerabilities and objective 8 to save lives, 2023 was the deadliest year on record for migrants with nearly 8,600 deaths.
And the most volatile and vulnerable spaces seem to be at the highest levels of government. In this year of elections, when nearly half the world’s population head to the ballot booth, migration is widely being used as one of, if not THE, primary wedge issue, purposefully utilized by political parties across the spectrum as a very effective divisive tool.
How did we get here?
Geopolitical Shifts
How indeed did the GCM lose its momentum and energy so fast after that celebratory Friday of 13 July 2018? First and foremost, the foundations for its derailment were already being put in place around the globe at the very same time the GCM was being negotiated at UN HQ. With the benefit of hindsight, we can track the geopolitical shifts beginning around that time – a surge of ultra-nativist, anti-migrant, fear-driven political waves carved its way around the world.
The USA under the then-new Trump Administration had already withdrawn from any engagement in the GCM on the eve of the stock-taking meeting in Puerto Vallarta (Mexico) in December 2017. And then soon after the GCM negotiations ended in June 2018 and before its adoption in December 2018, an anti-GCM campaign was waged especially across Europe, filled with misinformation and demonizing its proponents. This led to the withdrawal of several countries, most shockingly Switzerland which had had its own ambassador as one of the two co-facilitators of the entire GCM negotiations.
The geopolitical shift resulted in the ascension to power of a new kind of political leadership in various countries, particularly in destination countries in the global north. Among other unwelcomed developments, this led to intensified criminalization of migration, a hyper focus on border control, severe reductions in asylum protections, and other similar erosions in migrant rights and protections. These occur in stark contrast to GCM objectives such as on regular pathways, alternatives to detention, access to basic services, inclusion and social cohesion, eliminating discrimination, social protection and others. The ultimate effect of this political shift is evident especially at the national levels, where the political needle has markedly moved towards the Right, so that even Center-Left parties which had traditionally been more amenable towards migration, now feel pressured to take anti-migrant positions publicly.
UN-ization of the GCM
Another factor that has also inadvertently come into play, is the “UN-ization” of the GCM as part and parcel of its implementation process. While the GCM was always a UN document, its initial phases were very much Member States-driven, especially by visionary political leadership with a bigger picture in mind, and who were bold and empowered to challenge old norms and procedures to achieve grand goals. For instance, the GCM co-facilitators Ambassadors Juan Jose Gomez Camacho (Mexico) and Jürg Lauber (Switzerland) and their respective teams, skillfully shepherded the GCM drafts through the negotiations, starting with an ambitious and far-reaching zero draft. (Notably, their teams often reached out and incorporated proposed text from civil society and other stakeholders in the process.) Their efforts were also strongly supported by an active group of likeminded states – often led by the Swiss’ lead negotiator, Amb. Pietro Mona – who often negotiated as a strong collective and prevented erosion of the best parts of the GCM text.
With implementation came the necessary standing up of the GCM’s administrative and bureaucratic infrastructure. In one way, this allowed Member States to take a step back, and for intergovernmental organizations to take the lead especially with the creation and expansion of the UN Network on Migration (UNNM). And in fact, the UNNM has been extremely successful in bringing together key UN agencies to not only cooperate in a much more effective manner, but to increasingly speak with one voice.
But it can also be argued that this has unintentionally resulted in States taking a backseat in the GCM. We might even be tempted to view the GCM Champion Countries now as a form of window dressing – most nonstate observers do not really see them taking strong leadership for the GCM either collectively or individually, but merely issuing statements for certain events and meetings. And quite notable, as documented by MMC previously, among the current list of 35 Champion Countries, only three (Canada, Luxembourg and Portugal) can be categorized as countries of destination in the ‘global north’, putting the vast burden of “championing” the GCM upon the Global South.
Along with the growth of the UN infrastructure to support GCM implementation, non-government stakeholders are also being left to perfunctory roles at best. While they are definitely not lacking in voices to call for more real and meaningful inclusion in GCM implementation and review, more often than not they are subservient to both the UN system and Member States in that respect. Their participation even in review events are carefully managed by governmental and inter-governmental bodies. And centering the most important and benchmark events such as the IMRF within the auspices of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) brings along unnecessary procedural bureaucracies which have in turn become impossible hurdles to overcome for many grassroots organizations, especially migrant and diaspora associations and communities.
At the last IMRF, the UNGA and President of the General Assembly’s (PGA’s) requirement for stakeholder organisations to be legally registered in their countries in order for their representatives to participate in the stakeholder hearing, immediately eliminated countless informal grassroots associations, and those who face repression and criminalization by their own governments. And the lack of the UNGA’s official recognition of local and regional governments as official stakeholders, meant that dozens of mayors who have contributed greatly with innovative solutions to migration challenges, were left without any means for accreditation and were effectively banned from participating, having to hold their own events in a hotel across the street from the UN. This seriously calls into question the GCM’s guiding principles of having whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches.
In the ongoing round of RMRFs, many civil society organizations are again left confused and frustrated by the procedures and requirements to participate, and how the outcomes of the RMRF will actually feed and relate to the next IMRF in 2026. At the recent African RMRF, a number of government and civil society delegates were detained at the Addis Ababa airport overnight because their visas had not been processed even though they had duly applied for them and were on the organizers’ list. They were finally released only because the detained officials’ embassies had intervened with ministry officials. The irony of facing a repressive immigration regime while attending the premier regional forum on migration, seemed lost on the regional UNNM and UN Economic Commission of Africa (UNECA) organizers. And when a migrant domestic worker – who had subsequently missed the panel she was designated to speak on because she was detained at the airport – was proposed by the African Non-State Actors Platform to give an intervention when she could finally join the proceedings, she was denied by the organizers who insisted that even interventions were for “governments only”.
The GCM-GFMD nexus: Could the GFMD point the way?
It might also be argued that the GCM is an innocent victim of the Global Forum on Migration and Development’s (GFMD’s) gap years of 2021-2023. There was of course a GFMD summit in 2021 but since it was forced to take place virtually, it significantly reduced the most profound yet immeasurable outcomes of the GFMD – international trust-building and partnership development. Even as the GFMD shied away from specific policy outcomes and agreements, up to 2018 it had been THE space for multilateral and multi-stakeholder dialogue on migration.
We can trace most of the important forward tractions in international migration policy and governance since its inception to the GFMD, including the GCM itself. A decade and a half of painstaking trust-building, understanding and cooperation by migration experts and policy makers at the GFMD, beyond the scrutiny and heaviness of formal UN negotiations and treaty-drafting, paved the way for the normalization of hands-on cooperative practice that led to firstly the New York Declaration of the UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants in 2016, and then to the GCM in 2018.
It cannot be discounted that the GFMD built the political environment that incubated and gave birth to the GCM, and that same environment has eroded significantly. Ironically, with the advent of the GCM and ramping up of its activities and meetings, a lot of energy and attention – especially from governments – was inadvertently redirected towards the GCM, at the expense of the GFMD. And since staff rotations have gone around at most Permanent Missions and Foreign Ministries along with the institutional knowledge lost with that, it is not uncommon for most government delegates now to be attending their very first GFMD events, and also not unusual for a number of them to be sheepishly asking what the GFMD is even about.
However, with the reset button now firmly on the GFMD, and with the cautious enthusiasm accompanying the new Colombian Chairship, this might be an opportunity for the necessary political environment to rediscover itself, albeit with new actors and new innovations. Maybe it is time for the “GFMD mother” to lead her “GCM son” back on the right path to adulthood?
The North-South divide rules again
The North-South divide in global migration governance has again re-emerged within the GCM, particularly in relation to financing and implementation. As already mentioned, the Champion Countries of the GCM are predominantly countries in the Global South. However, financing for the GCM as evidenced in a very sizable MPTF, comes almost entirely from countries from the Global North. In essence, the GCM continues to flirt with the risk of becoming about addressing migration in and from the Global South, and financed by the Global North. (For an in-depth look into this, read MMC’s “Same old, same old? Are we seeing a resurfacing of the North-South divide in GCM implementation?”)
Civil society and other stakeholders: To disengage or to be co-opted
Many non-governmental stakeholders have also begun to lose energy and enthusiasm around the GCM. Stalwart critics of the GCM among civil society ranks have increased and gotten louder. And increasingly many civil society groups – especially those on-the-ground dealing with the most urgent humanitarian matters – are dropping out from consistent engagement in the GCM. When approached about it, the most uttered response is “we don’t have time, we have more urgent things going on…” This itself couldn’t be a clearer indication of the eroding relevance of the GCM to them.
But we also need to look in the mirror ourselves. Too many of us in civil society have been co-opted in the GCM process, running from one workstream meeting to the next, overwhelmed yet still struggling to find ways and means to attend every UNNM annual meeting and every GCM review forum, only to come away tired and disappointed. We are quickly approaching a bizarre and dangerous threshold – where a compact agreed upon between states is now more embraced by civil society than states. But maybe it is time to hit pause and do a bit of rethinking of why and how we engage. Could we be unwittingly giving validation and enabling the further demise of the GCM?
Diminishing energy and tip-toeing all around
With the current diminished energy and innovation in the GCM, it appears to be increasingly in serious danger of stalling, joining the ranks of other similar UN agreements and instruments gasping for air, such as the Migrant Workers’ Convention. Criticism from stakeholders at all levels is beginning to pile up. Member States are either sitting back from leading and energizing the GCM or carefully distancing themselves.
Even the International Organization for Migration (IOM) does not always refer to the GCM in spite of it housing and heading the UNNM. In fact, every six months IOM publishes recommendations on migration to the incoming presidency of the European Council and never refers to the GCM. It might be understandable from a pragmatic point of view, given the lack of interest in the GCM in Europe and relatively (compared to other continents) low adoption rate among European countries, but from a principled point of view, one may question how the GCM is to survive if the one UN agency that should coordinate implementation refrains from throwing its full weight behind it and always using it as a reference.
Even the entire global migration governance landscape where the GCM either thrives or perishes is suffocating. Once upon a time, migration was one of the top priorities at the UN (alongside climate change and sustainable development), but more recently it seems that with the advent of the GCM, migration has been neglected and begging for even the slightest attention. For example, in the lead up to the 2021 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), migration was deafeningly absent from mention in the drafts of the Ministerial Declaration, prompting the call from a few Member States and civil society for an amendment that adequately recognizes the contributions of migrants and migration towards sustainable development.
We urgently need to rekindle new energy and a new directional push to realize the GCM’s initial spirit, and a new visionary political leadership to relight the GCM’s dying flames. Rather than sit back and wait for another geopolitical shift to reverse the previous tide (which may never come, or come too late to save the GCM), all of us stakeholders have to radically switch our mindsets and take up the collective responsibility and challenge to reinvigorate the GCM. And it has to be now, not after the next IMRF which at the moment looks to be repeating more of the same if the current RMRFs are of any indication.
What to do next, then?
The first Special Representative to the Secretary-General (SRSG) on Migration and Development (2006-2017), the late Sir Peter Sutherland – who arguably played one of the biggest roles of visioning and shepherding the global migration governance landscape in his last 20 years or so – once not-so-quietly whispered that the UN is where good ideas (and presumably good multilateral agreements) go to die! At the current rate, we run the risk of him being profoundly accurate for the GCM. But as much as this appears like a doomsday scenario, it is also not too late if we can take action and change course before it is so.
For Member States
Member States who place any value at all in international cooperation on migration, cannot afford to sit back any longer. An alternative pathway should include an emergence of new political leadership which must be energetic and bold, while also being smart and effective. This could then initiate a rejoining among likeminded countries, just as they did with the invaluable Friends of Migration Group in New York leading up to, and during the GCM negotiations. They could definitely use a serious rethink about their investment in the GCM, not just to salvage it, but to make migration governance thrive once again.
Given current geopolitical environments, this might still be a tall task. At the very least then, countries who are able to, can and should begin an initiative to be real champions, taking back the reins from the UN, and opening up the idea banks from all quarters, including from other stakeholders. Reverse the trend of closing of civic spaces within the UN, and instead reimagine how a new and vibrant landscape could look like again with valuable contributions from all stakeholders. Most importantly, states need to lead and to organize themselves, not be led and be organized by interlocutors like the UN.
For the IOM and the UN
Can IOM consider itself a champion of sorts for the GCM? While it is very accountable to its own member states and plays it’s servicing role effectively well, it can also be of great service to GCM signatories (and perhaps even some non-signatories) by providing stronger guidance on effective implementation especially through its wide network of country and regional offices which already have established project ties with local government bodies.
The same for other UN agencies – utilize their skillset and expertise to support governments with implementation on relevant objectives, expanding on best practices etc. UN agencies under the auspices of the UNNM should utilize their newfound collective voice to uplift innovative practices and ideas, instead of being bogged down by traditional procedures and activity which bring little to no value. This of course is already being done, but it is vital that the role of the UN system is best in support of Member States to lead and implement, NOT for the UN and its agencies themselves to lead.
For Civil Society
We have to collectively push (and push extremely hard!) for real and meaningful seats at the GCM table as both implementers AND reviewers of the GCM’s objectives, not just leaving assessments to voluntary national reviews by governments, where of course Member States pick and choose which objectives they feel they do well on, while conveniently ignoring the rest. There has to be accountability and responsibility-sharing.
And we cannot just wait passively for this to happen. Civil society must firstly re-collectivize our efforts. By rejoining our cooperation with old and new allies among us, as well as with governments and other stakeholders, we can once again rediscover new and innovative ideas, and to find the few open channels to push forward in new and more effective directions.
More than ever, now is the time for civil society to also take a leadership role to re-invigorate and re-imagine the GCM by taking urgent action and tapping into our own best and brightest leaders across the board and around the world. This of course, must go hand-in-hand with governmental and inter-governmental stakeholders’ recognition and the welcoming once more of stakeholders’ contributions, just as they did on 13 July 2018 and during the months of GCM negotiations before that.
For the Private Sector
Admittedly it has been a struggle for the private sector to stay engaged, similar to civil society, facing many challenges within the current GCM infrastructure. But especially now, the private sector needs to re-invigorate its strategic engagement. With increasing labour shortages in the global north, how can the GCM be effectively applied to address that?
The infrastructure for this already exists with the Business Advisory Group on Migration and its Business Mechanism (BM). All of its four core areas of focus (skills mobility, responsible recruitment, skills development and matching, technology and migration) are already explicitly and implicitly embedded within GCM objectives. There is much more for the BM to contribute to the GCM than is currently happening.
For Local Governments
Not surprisingly, many local and regional governments (LRGs) have been the best ones at implementing GCM objectives within their localities, even if they are unaware of it. Can they be given an even bigger role to demonstrate how this can be done, perhaps working in partnership with their respective national governments? Rather than being shunned by national governments, LRGs should be embraced – cue the whole-of-government and whole-of-society guiding principles of the GCM – and uplifted for their good practices and innovative approaches, including how they work with non-governmental stakeholders at the local level.
Again, the infrastructure for this already exists with the Mayors Mechanism (MM) – which not coincidentally was launched on the eve of the Marrakech Conference with their Marrakech Mayors Declaration – and their stated commitment to both the GCM and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR). With their ongoing Call to Local Action, the MM is actively growing endorsements and pledges among LRGs to implement both compacts with “pragmatic, principled and people-centered approaches that spearhead and exceed the commitments” of the GCM. That’s the kind of energy that needs to be brought back to the GCM.
Conclusion
The GCM will very soon have gone through two cycles of implementation and international review. Some continue to state that it still represents the primary tool for global migration governance and international cooperation. But those that do are increasingly only doing that perhaps out of self-interest, or are genuinely blinded by the GCM’s many technicalities and activities to really see the numerous signs of trouble ahead. Remaining complacent and accepting things as they are, will only result in the inevitable. And what an utter shame that would be if such great ideas, efforts and resources in the GCM would eventually not have any relevance in the real world.
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Colin Rajah is an independent consultant and views expressed in this article are entirely his own, and not attributable to any organization. He previously served as Coordinator for the Civil Society Action Committee and GFMD Civil Society Mechanism (2019-2024), and as IOM’s Civil Society Liaison to the GCM (2017-2018). Colin is currently also a consultant to the International Catholic Migration Commission’s Policy Department.
Bram Frouws is the director of the Mixed Migration Centre, and has closely followed the development and implementation of the GCM, including through policy statements and analyses on the various drafts of GCM during the negotiations, a study taking stock of GCM implementation one year after the adoption, a study on the GCM in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and a critical article on the north-south divide in GCM implementation.