In my previous blogpost, I expressed skepticism on the question whether the upcoming High Level Dialogue (HLD) on Migration and Development will yield any concrete result, mainly because governments of wealthy countries are unwilling to protect the rights of the lower skilled and refugees and to commit to more liberal immigration policies.
In a reaction, Barbara Harrell-Bond, the founder of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre, wrote to me that it is equally important to remind governments of developing countries that they also receive migrants and refugees.
She pointed out that major emigration countries such as Egypt and Morocco ratified the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families "for very self-interested reasons, because they were concerned with their emigrants, not because they ever expected to deal properly with their immigrants". Governments of emigration countries should therefore be challenged to behave themselves.
Read more
