İGAM President Metin Çorabatır has made a statement due to 18th December International Migrants Day. In his speech, Çorabatır remarked that "Migrants and refugees contribute to the establishment of a stronger society with their knowledge, connections, and abilities... Let’s esteem refugees and migrants as ‘human beings’; Let’s consider their presence as a chance and opportunity."
Çorabatır’s speech is as follows:
United Nations Migration Network has made a call on International Migrants Day for the international community to the protection of all human rights, more especially the right to live of migrants, to reduce their vulnerabilities, and to take optimum advantage of safe and regular legal migration.
As of last year (2020), there are 281 million people in the world who identified as international migrants and refugees. According to International Organization for Migration (IOM), 3.6 percent of the whole world’s population is immigrant. Some of these people; those who left or are leaving their country voluntarily, some of them because of disasters, economic crises, poverty, conflict, and political oppression and persecution.
All these factors will continue to define the volume and characteristics of the migration in the future.
Therefore, migration policies should be planned by paying attention to these factors and the potential benefits of migration should be ensured by protecting the basic human rights of migrants.
Migrants and refugees contribute to the establishment of stronger societies with their knowledge, talents, and networks.
Xenophobia rises like never seen before.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of understanding of this fact, 14,000 immigrants have lost their lives on the migration routes since 2018, without being able to reach the country they wanted to go to or had to in order to save their lives. Lots of immigrants and refugees couldn’t make the whole route and got stuck in extremely negative conditions or pushed back. Human smuggling and human trafficking continue to maintain their development as an important sector. Non-registered migrants have been debarred from basic health services, more especially Covid-19 tests, vaccinations, and treatments.
Covid-19 and economic crises arose due to Covid-19 made thousands of migrants unemployed. Women and children are the ones who got affected the most.
Even though it has been banned by basic human rights law, discrimination and xenophobia against migrants and refugees rise like never seen before in history. The most important factor which is also fueling this discrimination is the politicization of migration and refugees with vote concerns.
Turkey hosts approximately four million registered refugees, presumably one million registered or non-registered migrants and refugees, five million foreigners in total. Turkey provides protection for millions of refugees internationally. In this sense, Turkey contributes to world peace along with the other countries which accept refugees.
The theme of this year’s International Refugees Day had been determined as "Reaping the Fruit of Human Mobility’’. There are two essential steps needed in order to find a response in real life. The first one is making legal regulations to eliminate political, legal, and economic factors that cause refugees, whether registered or irregular immigrants, to be discriminated against in the countries they live in. Secondly, the responsibilities of countries which has large numbers of refugees should be shared more effectively by the entire international community.
Let’s esteem refugees and immigrants as ‘human beings’; let’s consider their presence as a chance and opportunity.
*This article is translated by IGAM Volunteer Ayda Koç.
