Migration remains a huge challenge facing mankind today and the United Nations (UN) is hoping that 2018 will bring the biggest common agreement on how best to address it. But, thanks to the United States, 2017 ended on a rough patch and the rest of the world's nations are gearing up for a rough ride to end this year on a better footing.

In 2016, all 193 UN member-states unanimously signed a non-binding agreement called "The New York Declaration," which "expresses the political will of world leaders to save lives, protect rights, and share responsibility on a global scale."

But at the end of 2017, Washington announced it was pulling out of the agreement, with the Trump administration saying the document agreed to by the Obama administration was "inconsistent with U.S. immigration and refugee policies."

Ambassador Nikki Haley told the UN in late December that the U.S. "will continue to support migrants, but on its own terms," insisting the declaration was "simply not consistent with U.S. sovereignty."

The remaining 192 nations decided to prod along, however, with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appealing for a sea change in nations' attitudes, urging them to see migrants in a whole new, positive light.

The UN estimates there are 258 million migrants worldwide today and the number keeps growing, having increased by 49 percent since 2000 and now representing 3.4 percent of the world's population.

A UN report entitled "Making Migration Work for All," submitted in early January 2018, encourages governments to remove obstacles to migrants, arguing that legal restrictions unintentionally cause them to seek and find illegal means to pursue their goals.

The report indicates that migrants contribute to the economic well-being of the countries they reside in by spending 85 percent of their incomes and sending home 15 percent.

In 2017, it said, an estimated $600 billion was transferred in migrant remittances globally, with $450 billion going to poor countries, amounting to three times the total amount of overseas development assistance.

The UN's High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) says apart from contributing to powering economic growth, migration also reduces inequalities and connects diverse societies.

Coming just two days ahead of the originally-planned international summit on the Global Compact on Migration, the U.S. pullout forced its postponement to December 2018 in Morocco, where and when the UN hopes to agree on a collective migration strategy.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) points out that because of the ageing world population, by 2050 there will be a need for over 50 million additional health care workers.

IOM officials argue, therefore, that in the context of a rich but ageing north and a poor but youthful south, it will be better to plan ahead and start tapping these available human resources and skills as of now.

Stubborn governments are being asked to open up more routes for migration, take steps to tap the foreign labor it offers, celebrate its identified international benefits, take responsibility for ending the stigma surrounding it and dispel alarming misrepresentations of its real effects.

Guterres encourages nations to do three things: Recognize and reinforce migration's benefits; strengthen the rule of law underpinning how they manage and protect migrants; and ensure greater international cooperation to protect vulnerable migrants, as well as refugees.

But migration is also related to other factors such as Internally Displaced People (IDPs), Refugees and Modern Slavery.

Today, the UN estimates that more than 65 million people are currently displaced from their homes – almost one in every 100 human beings.

The latest UNHCR annual global trends study reports that one person was forced to leave their home every three seconds in 2016 – 300,000 more than in 2015.

And then there's the growing phenomenon of Modern Slavery, which the International Labor Organization (ILO) defines as: "Situations of exploitation that a person can't refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion or deception – which includes forced labor, debt bondage, forced marriage and human trafficking."

The ILO and The Walk Free Foundation in September 2017 issued a joint report entitled "The 2017 Global Estimates of Modern Slavery," which revealed that over 40 million people are trapped in modern slavery worldwide, of which 25 percent are children.

It indicated that 25 million people are "in forced labor" and "15 million are in forced marriages," with "women and girls accounting for 71 percent of slavery victims, including 99 percent in the commercial sex industry and 84 percent in forced marriages."

Indeed, with millions having landing on its shores, throughout 2017 Europe remained deeply divided over how to handle its overflowing refugee crisis, resulting in the European Union (EU) actually taking legal action against member-states that absolutely refused to accept assigned quotas to help reduce the burden on those that did.

But, as with migrants and IDPs, there are also continuing complaints that not enough is being done to address the global problems of refugees and victims of human trafficking.

The efforts of agencies like the UNHCR, IOM, ILO and other related international entities must be commended for putting issues of migration, IDPs, refugees and modern slavery on the global agenda today.

But, as history has shown time and again, it is the extent to which nations are prepared to reflect in practice what they agree to at world conferences that will decide how fast or slow the needed actions will follow and flow, to effect the needed changes. 

Earl Bousquet is a contributor to china.org.cn, editor-at-large of The Diplomatic Courier and author of an online regional newspaper column entitled Chronicles of a Chronic Caribbean Chronicler.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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