Rhetoric from politicians framing migration as a threat and refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants as dangerous has become troublingly commonplace in recent years around the world. What is less talked about is the fact that humanitarian organisations are all-too-frequently guilty of using similar tropes in their public communications, even if their intentions are not malicious.
These narratives are often employed with the aim of raising funds and political visibility for the ostensibly good cause of providing humanitarian support to people on the move.
The fact that they are used even by ‘the good guys’ speaks to how pervasive such narratives have become, and it helps to fuel an already toxic migration debate, further increasing the fear of migration and contributing to ever-harsher policies and actions against migrants.
Surely those of us in the migration sector, operating with humanitarian principles, can – and should – do better.
In this year of elections – when half of the world is going to the ballot booth – migration is a particularly heated topic of public debate. This only makes it even more important for humanitarian and civil society actors to use and promote balanced and productive discussions about the challenges and opportunities presented by migration.
Bad behaviour
There are, unfortunately, many examples that illustrate this point.
In April this year, when speaking about displacement caused by Sudan’s brutal civil war, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said, “I'm making the case for more support to be given to those that are displaced inside Sudan or immediately in the neighbouring countries, because otherwise they will become refugees along those routes.”
He was implying that if countries don’t provide enough support, displaced Sudanese would likely soon migrate further afield, to Europe, where anti-migration sentiment is running high.
Humanitarians, unfortunately, have been using rhetoric like this – that plays on and reinforces fears of migration to motivate action and fundraising – for years.
In 2020, the previous director of the UN’s World Food Programme wrote in an opinion piece for USA Today that “the geopolitical impact of famine cannot be understated. Terrorism will surge. Governments will be destabilised. And mass migrations in search of food will inundate secure and prosperous nations”.
In January 2021, some 3,000 scientists signed up to a global statement ahead of the Climate Adaptation Summit, saying that unless we step up to address the climate emergency, the results will be “increasing poverty, water shortages, agricultural losses, and soaring levels of migration”.
Former US Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry has made similar arguments, saying that the result of climate inaction will be the movement of tens of millions of climate migrants that would likely end up sparking wars.
In the field of development cooperation, the idea that we need to increase development in countries where migrants come from has become commonplace.
The so-called “addressing the root causes” approach – while it has many different flaws – has a problematic overarching premise: that one goal of development funding should be to stop migration, distracting from its traditional purpose of reducing poverty and painting migration as something inherently negative.
European states, UN agencies, and NGOs are also increasingly talking about a “whole of route” approach to addressing migration. The importance of this approach is that it promotes coordination between countries along the same migration route, to share information and ensure migrants receive protection and assistance and can make informed choices along their entire journey.
But a more cynical interpretation – one that was recently promoted by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni when she was pushing for the controversial EU-Egypt migration deal signed in March – is that it calls for assisting and protecting migrants in order to stop them from moving onwards to Europe, not because they are people who need assistance and protection.
Move away from fear-based narratives
In most of these cases, the intentions of individuals and organisations using this rhetoric were good. The objective was to advocate and raise funds for important issues: Climate action, poverty reduction, preventing famine, and providing humanitarian support and protection to displaced people and people on the move.
Anti-migration fear mongering has tremendous political currency. But that does not mean we – as humanitarians and civil society actors – should accept this.
We need action to be taken on all of these fronts, and we need it urgently. But the reason why it is important to act on all these issues is not because a failure to do so will result in more migration toward Europe and the United States.
We need to act because climate change is a threat to all of our societies, helping people get out of poverty makes the world a more equitable place, and preventing people from dying of hunger and providing humanitarian assistance to people suffering the consequence of a terrible war in Sudan is a humanitarian and moral imperative.
Perhaps we should not be naive about the ability to end the use of this rhetoric. Sadly, anti-migration fear mongering has tremendous political currency. But that does not mean we – as humanitarians and civil society actors – should accept this and adapt and hyperbolize our advocacy and fundraising strategies and be complicit in misusing the anxieties around migration to meet our otherwise good intentions and objectives.
Even if it is a good fundraising strategy, it is a poor advocacy strategy as it buys into the anti-migration narrative that is so prevalent across the world. Ultimately, action motivated by fear – and often xenophobia – is unlikely to be sustainable or humanitarian.
Objective 17 of the UN's Global Compact for Migration, adopted in 2018, includes a commitment to “promote an open and evidence-based public discourse on migration and migrants in partnership with all parts of society, that generates a more realistic, humane, and constructive perception in this regard”.
Policy makers and humanitarian leaders should live up to this objective and stop using the fear of migration as an advocacy and fundraising strategy.
