[Imc-birmingham] feature proposal: IOM Unwelcome in Birmingham

Mon Jul 14 14:56:19 PDT 2008

Hi,

I'd like to propose the following feature for the Birmingham startpage. I
will publish it after 24 hrs if there are no objections or
corrections/additions.

-- 
Shiar

Title: IOM Unwelcome in Birmingham

Author: IMC Birmingham

Image: /images/2008/06/401913.jpg

Abstract:

The International Organisation against Migration, aka the
International Organisation for Migration or IOM, held a <a
href="/en/regions/birmingham/2008/07/403079.html">'conference' in
Birmingham</a> last month in preparation for opening a <a
href="/en/regions/birmingham/2008/07/402417.html">new regional office</a>
in the city. A handful of local activists did a <a
href="/en/regions/birmingham/2008/06/401910.html">banner drop</a> at the
four-star hotel where the event was held to unwelcome dodgy organisation.
They also gave out leaflets to the delegates to tell them the truth about
IOM, whose real mission is to help Western governments 'manage migration'
and meet their deportation quotas.

Reports: <a
href="/en/regions/birmingham/2008/06/401910.html">IOM Unwelcomed in
Birmingham</a> | <a
href="/en/regions/birmingham/2008/07/402417.html">IOM's new Birmingham
office</a> | <a href="/en/regions/birmingham/2008/07/403079.html">Inside
the IOM Birmingham conference</a> | <a
href="/en/regions/birmingham/2006/01/332449.html">IOM Bribing Asylum
Seekers to Return Home</a> | <a
href="/en/regions/birmingham/2006/08/349649.html">The So-Called Voluntary
Return</a>

Related: <a href="/en/2002/09/41733.html">Shadowy
deportation organisation opens office in London</a> | <a
href="/en/regions/scotland/2006/01/331389.html">New Home Office Scheme
Against Asylum Seekers in Glasgow</a> | <a
href="http://bristol.indymedia.org.uk/article/688302">IOM Picket in
Bristol</a> | <a href="http://bristol.indymedia.org.uk/article/688509">No
Platform for the IOM (Bristol)</a> | <a
href="http://www.noborder.org/iom/index.php">No Border's IOM page</a>

Content:

The IOM was founded in 1951, under the leadership of the USA, mainly with
the intention of creating a counter-agency to the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR). Unlike this, IOM does not have a Protection Mandate for
its work with refugees and displaced persons and is not really accountable
to anyone. From the beginning, the 'agency' has not been based on
humanitarian principles but on economic considerations; its core policies
are not concerned with the well-being of people but the well being of
(Western) economies. During the Cold War, the Intergovernmental Committee
for European Migration (ICEM), as IOM used to be called then, was
instrumental in the manpower and brain drain from Eastern and Central
European countries into Western Europe. It was as instrumental in the
formation of ethnically or religiously defined nation-states in the Indian
subcontinent and Eastern Africa. With the 'help' of ICEM, ethnic Asians
were evacuated from Uganda, Muslim Indians were settled in Pakistan and
so on and so forth. Over the years, IOM has assumed the function of a
transnational organisation that controls, or helps control, global
migration. (For the official history of IOM, see <a
href="http://iom.int/jahia/Jahia/lang/en/pid/11">here</a>; for an
alternative history, see <a
href="http://noborder.org/iom/display.php?id=178">here</a>.)

Today, with 125 member states and a further 16 states with observer
status, IOM has offices in over 100 countries. One of the undeclared
functions of these branches is to serve Western governments as a
"migration warning system", which makes sure that they are informed in
advance about upcoming "mass migration flows". In the late 1990s, for
example, the IOM used to publish a bulletin called Trafficking in
Migrants, which contained extensive information on migration routes,
clandestine methods, networking activities and such like.

IOM's role in '<a
href="http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/lang/en/pid/243">migration
management</a>' is not confined to information, however. Through its <a
href="http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/pid/749">Technical Cooperation on
Migration</a> (TCM) division, it provides governments and other agencies
with technical, intellectual and strategic tools to "enhance their
migration management capacities". Further, it has become an 'alternative
agency' that helps Western governments meet their deportation quotas
wherever deporting unwanted migrants is too costly, difficult or where
they want to avoid their human rights obligations under international law.

In the UK, IOM started to operate in 1999. It was IOM who went to the UK
government and told them, in the aftermath of the Kosovo war, that there
are Serbs here who want to go back home but don't have the means to. And
so it was: IOM 'helped' them return or, rather, helped the UK government
get rid of them, starting a close cooperation that would last and grow
over the years. In the nine years since 1999, IOM has 'assisted' more than
27,000 people to 'return' to some 130 countries from the UK.

In a remarkable move in 2002, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
challenged the politics of IOM in a relatively strong <a
href="http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/12/ai-hrw-statement.htm">joint
statement</a> that said: "In particular, we are concerned that IOM's work
in certain contexts is adversely impacting upon basic human rights of
migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, including for example the right to
be free from arbitrary detention and the fundamental right to seek
asylum." It followed an earlier joint motion by Human Rights Watch,
International Catholic Migration Committee and the World Council of
Churches, which was passed to a UNHCR conference in June 2001. Other
international organisations, such as the Roma National Congress in Germany
(RNC), have expressed stronger criticisms. It is quite significant that
the RNC <a href="http://www.romnews.com/a/32-01.html">dubbed IOM</a> as
"the enemy of the Roma people" and accused it, back in 2001, of playing a
crucial role in "expelling" the Roma from Western Europe and "breaking the
collective resistance" by arranging their travel individually. (See <a
href="http://noborder.org/iom/display.php?id=243">here</a> for more
criticisms of IOM.)