UN: Peter Sutherland tells Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, about his role in this week's special United Nations meeting on the issue of migration
More than 100 countries will be represented at the high-level dialogue on international migration and development at UN headquarters in New York on Thursday and Friday this week.
The principal mover and shaker behind the conference, held under the auspices of the UN General Assembly, is Peter Sutherland, formerly attorney general of Ireland, European commissioner and director-general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organisation). He is currently chairman of BP and of Goldman Sachs International, investment bankers.
"Out of the blue, I was called by Kofi Annan in November last year," he recalls. "He asked me to do this, obviously on a part-time basis."
Sutherland's role as special representative of the secretary-general on migration and development has meant meeting representatives of 70 to 80 governments to drum up support for this week's gathering. "The secretary-general wanted me to speak to as many governments as possible to try to create a momentum for this conference, get the level of attendance that was required, namely ministerial, and look at how this whole issue might develop in the future," he explains.
"A lot of the discussion has been around whether a dialogue of this kind should be under the umbrella of the UN or not, and what should be the UN involvement," he says.
Sutherland is clearly anxious that there should be an outcome to this week's meeting in New York and that it should mark the beginning of a process. He wants more than just "two days of what will often be pro-forma statements".
With Kofi Annan's support, he has proposed the establishment of a forum which would meet in different places to discuss migration issues. He sees this as a "caravan" to bring the countries of the north and south together and says that it would involve the "best expertise" and "real decision-makers".
Migration has so many implications and ramifications that it is hard to know where the buck stops in any particular government, he says. "One of the problems very evident to me is that it is very difficult to know who to talk to. There's often very limited co-ordination."
Numerous departments and ministries are obliged to take an interest in migration, including justice and home affairs, labour, economic policy planning, health, education, development and foreign affairs. "There isn't a structure with a leadership on the issue of migration - the holistic development of migration policies. That's a global problem and it's not an easy one," says Sutherland. "Migration is undoubtedly one of the two or three great issues of our time."
He points out that there are more than 200 million migrants in the world, i.e. 23 per cent of those making up the population of Paris were born outside France and 28 per cent of Londoners are from other countries.
The phrase "emigrants' remittances" has particular resonance for Irish ears and Sutherland says official figures show that this outlay amounted to some €232 billion last year, although the actual total has to be considerably higher. This compares with a world total of $106 billion in overseas development aid. Sutherland describes the cost of sending the remittances as "absolutely ludicrous" and wants the international community to take practical steps to have these transfer charges significantly reduced.
The question of migration falls into two broad categories, legal and illegal, he says: "From the point of view of migrants and the societies into which they travel, it is much better to have a reduction of illegal migration. That would also reduce the level of human-trafficking.
"The only way you can begin to deal with this problem is by co-operation across borders. You can't do it by building walls."
Sutherland again emphasises that he does not want the UN meeting to be a talking-shop. "I want a decision to come out of the conference that this continuing dialogue will take place under the rubric of this forum."
The forum would have a "light connection" with the UN. It would be run by a small secretariat directly under the secretary-general.
The idea would be to hold a conference on a particular subject such as remittances or illegal migration, and the "best experts in the world" would be invited to speak. "It wouldn't be a PR exercise, it would be an exercise of information-sharing."
The Irish delegation to the conference will be headed by Minister of State for Agriculture Mary Wallace.