An International Organization’s Approach to Labour Migration for Human Development

Abstract

The chapter tries to summarize the approach to labour mobility expressed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) over the past decades. As an intergovernmental organization, IOM has offered its support to governments in meeting the challenges of managing all forms of migration in accordance with international law, while supporting migrants across the world, particularly those in situation of vulnerability and in emergency situations. From its establishment, the Organization has broadened its scope of action and restructured itself in line with the shifting dynamics of migrations, also recently joining the United Nations system in 2016 and becoming the Secretariat for the UN Migration Network established after the adoption of the Global Compact for Migration in late 2018. In the most recent institutional documents, position papers and implemented activities, it advocates and works to protect migrant workers and to optimize the benefits of labour migration for the migrants themselves, their origin and destination countries. The chapter claims that predictable, coherent and equitable pathways to regular migration, as those also promoted by IOM, are needed not only on economic and rights-based grounds, but also from a public and global health perspective as the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic continue to unfold.

The opinions expressed in this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). This article was closed in September 2021.