The visiting International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Director General, Amy Pope, said that countries should establish more safe and regular pathways for migration, as this is beneficial for both migrants and their countries of origin and destination.
Pope, who is on a three-day working visit to Zimbabwe, made these remarks while addressing guests at a government-hosted cocktail event at the Rainbow Hotel on Monday. She said:
We also can do it by creating more safe and regular pathways for people to migrate, because we know when people migrate, when they migrate safely, when they migrate with dignity when they’re paid a fair wage when their labour rights are protected wherever they work, it is not just a win for that person. It’s a win for the country she comes from here in Zimbabwe.
It’s a win for the country that she goes to. So when we talk about migration, we talk not just about protecting the world’s most vulnerable. Sure, that’s what we do as well.
Pope said she had fruitful discussions on strategizing a wide range of issues, including facilitating the movement of people to create more opportunities for them wherever they might be. She said:
We also spoke about the impact of climate change, which we know is going to displace more and more people moving forward.
You may not realize it, but last year, more people were newly displaced because of climate change, not because of conflict. Now, the good news is that it means we can take action now.
We can take action to build resilience in the people of Zimbabwe, who today rely heavily on rainfall agriculture, and work with them to build the skills for the future, work with them to develop new ways of farming or new ways of building livelihoods.
We’re gonna do that with our partners within the UN family, but we also talked about how to harness the power, the catalyzing power, the sustainable development that is inherent when people move.
Pope’s discussions with government officials included Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister July Moyo, Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe (represented by his deputy Chido Sanyatwe), among others.
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