The International Organization for Migration

Challenges, Commitments, Complexities

Megan Bradley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000762877
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since its establishment in 1951, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has expanded from a small, regionally specific, logistically focused outfit into a major international organization involved in an almost dizzying array of activities related to human mobility. In 2016, IOM joined the UN system and has rebranded itself as the "UN migration agency." Despite its dramatic expansion and increasing influence, IOM remains understudied.

This book provides an accessible, incisive introduction to IOM, focusing on its humanitarian activities and responses to forced migration – work that now makes up the majority of the organization's budget, staff, and field presence. IOM's humanitarian work is often overlooked or dismissed as a veil for its involvement in other activities that serve states' interests in restricting migration. In contrast, Bradley argues that understanding IOM's involvement in humanitarian action and work with displaced persons is pivotal to comprehending its evolution and contemporary significance. Examining tensions and controversies surrounding the agency's activities, including in the complex cases of Haiti and Libya, the book considers how IOM's structure, culture, and internal and external power struggles have shaped its behaviour. It demonstrates how IOM has grown by acting as an entrepreneur, cultivating autonomy and influence well beyond its limited formal mandate.

The International Organization for Migration is essential reading for students and scholars of migration, humanitarianism, and international organizations.

1
A SERVANT OF STATE MASTERS? IOM’S MANDATE, STRUCTURE, AND CULTURE

• IOM Constitution and mandate
  • What’s in a mandate? Humanitarian action and the protection mandate issue
• IOM and its member states
• Organizational structure and culture
  • Institutional structure and intra-organizational competition
  • The role of the director general
  • Staffing and generational differences
  • Projectization and decentralization
• Conclusion: building institutional autonomy on unlikely foundations

Can international organizations (IOs) act autonomously? A wide range of IR scholars have compellingly refuted the assumption that IOs are merely servants of their state masters. For example, studies have shown how, in spite of member states’ misgivings, UNHCR dramatically expanded its formal mandate and its involvement in responding to forced migration worldwide. Albeit with varying degrees of success, UNHCR has challenged restrictive and abusive policies towards refugees, even when they are backed by powerful states, and has shaped the refugee regime in ways unanticipated by its creators in 1950.¹ In contrast, in the limited literature on IOM, the organization is still often assumed to be entirely in the pocket of its member states, diligently implementing the programs they desire, and keeping mum on violations of migrants’ rights.² This assumption is in some ways understandable: all IOs pledge faithful service to their member states, but IOM is strikingly deferential to governments, and overtly characterizes itself as a “member state-led organization.”³ In some ways, compared to more robustly mandated organizations like UNHCR, IOM’s Constitution, institutional structure, and organizational culture provide weak or even antithetical foundations for autonomous action. And yet, in other senses, IOM’s institutional characteristics and culture have proven to be surprisingly fertile grounds for organizational development, with varying degrees of autonomy.

In this chapter I introduce and analyze IOM’s Constitution and mandate, member state politics, organizational structure, and institutional culture, with a view to understanding the possibility of autonomous action on the part of IOM. I first explore how IOM’s “permissive” Constitution has enabled its engagement in a remarkably wide range of activities in emergency and post-crisis contexts, and the implications of the organization’s lack of a clear, legally entrenched protection mandate. Second, I provide an overview of IOM member state politics, stressing the clear imprint of the United States on the organization, and the rising influence of member states from the global South. Third, I reflect on the relationship between IOM’s organizational structure and culture, examining the role of the director general; IOM’s decentralization and project-based funding model; and some of the tensions that shape the agency, including those between IOM’s humanitarian-oriented Department of Operations and Emergencies and its Department of Migration Management, and generational differences between “old guard,” operationally focused staffers and younger cohorts. Setting the stage for my discussion in Chapter 2 of how IOM has strategically evolved and entrepreneurially expanded in the humanitarian sphere, I argue that despite IOM’s rather unlikely institutional foundations for independently shaping migration governance and, more specifically, humanitarian responses to displacement, the agency has strategically cultivated its capacity for autonomous action, at the same time as it remains highly deferential to states.

IOM Constitution and mandate

Established in 1951 as the Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from Europe (PICMME), the organization commenced work in 1952 as the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM). Its Constitution was only adopted in 1953, and entered into force on November 30, 1954. The Constitution “provides a framework for the purposes, functions, legal status, finance, membership, and other issues necessary for the functioning of the Organization.”⁴ Surprisingly, the organization’s transformation into a global actor was officially effected in 1980 without formal changes to the Constitution. In November 1980, the Council adopted a resolution that removed “European” from the organization’s name, making it the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration (ICM). According to an IOM institutional history, the resolution was adopted by consensus as the “modification was perceived as the recognition of an established fact and was not considered to imply any major changes in the Committee’s mandate or the Constitution.”⁵ Later constitutional amendments addressed this change.

The current IOM Constitution incorporates the ICEM Constitution of 1953, as well as amendments that were adopted in 1987 and entered into force in 1989, when the organization was renamed IOM and became a permanent institution. The Constitution also reflects amendments that were agreed to in 1998 and entered into force in 2013, which streamlined IOM’s governance structures. Under the Constitution, the IOM Council, comprised of its member states, is the organization’s highest decision-making body. Each member state has one representative and one vote on the Council.

IOM often describes itself as an organization “dedicated to promoting humane and orderly migration for the benefit of all.”⁶ Its purposes and functions are more formally articulated in a single article (Article 1) of the IOM Constitution, which indicates that:

1. The purposes and functions of the Organization shall be:
   • (a) to make arrangements for the organized transfer of migrants, for whom existing facilities are inadequate or who would not otherwise be able to move without special assistance, to countries offering opportunities for orderly migration;
   • (b) to concern itself with the organized transfer of refugees, displaced persons and other individuals in need of international migration services for whom arrangements may be made between the Organization and the States concerned, including those States undertaking to receive them;
   • (c) to provide, at the request of and in agreement with the States concerned, migration services such as recruitment, selection, processing, language training, orientation activities, medical examination, placement, activities facilitating reception and integration, advisory services on migration questions, and other assistance as is in accord with the aims of the Organization;
   • (d) to provide similar services as requested by States, or in cooperation with other interested international organizations, for voluntary return migration, including voluntary repatriation;
   • (e) to provide a forum to States as well as international and other organizations for the exchange of views and experiences, and the promotion of cooperation and coordination of efforts on international migration issues, including studies on such issues in order to develop practical solutions.

This article reflects the organization’s strong early focus on logistical support for transporting migrants – initially with ships inherited from the IRO – a line of work that led to the idea that IOM is a “glorified travel agency.”⁷ This is certainly a misperception. However, the Constitution, while generally short on substantive details, does linger on the details of transportation logistics. For example, the preamble underscores that “the movement of migrants should, to the extent possible, be carried out with normal transport services but that, on occasion, there is a need for additional or other facilities.”⁸

The IOM Constitution is a remarkably short document. Beyond the sole article set out earlier that makes up Chapter I of the Constitution on IOM’s Purposes and Functions, the rest of the document is devoted to formalities including membership (Chapter II), organs (Chapter III), the IOM Council (Chapter IV), administration (Chapter V), headquarters (Chapter VI), finance (Chapter VII), legal status (Chapter VIII), and “miscellaneous provisions” (Chapter IX) on issues such as voting procedures, and the interpretation, amendment, and application of the Constitution. Although Perruchoud argues that the amendments to the IOM Constitution in the 1980s aimed to more securely underpin the agency’s “basic humanitarian character and orientation,” the Constitution makes no direct reference to human rights, protection, or humanitarian principles.⁹ Instead it stresses that, “The Organization shall recognize the fact that control of standards of admission and the number of immigrants to be admitted are matters within the domestic jurisdiction of States, and, in carrying out its functions, shall conform to the laws, regulations and policies of the States concerned.”¹⁰ While otherwise thin on explicit normative commitments, the Constitution emphasizes the need for international cooperation to address migration flows, and indicates that IOM’s member states have “a demonstrated interest in the principles of free movement of persons.”¹¹ As noted in the Introduction, this provision served as grounds to exclude Communist countries that restricted citizens’ right to leave, staunching flows of would-be refugees to the west. This exclusion was critical to American support for the agency, and explains its creation outside the UN system. In 1951, the US Congress refused to approve funds to address the post-war displacement crisis in Europe by any IO with Communist members, a stance that initially undercut UNHCR’s ability to respond operationally to refugees.¹² Instead, American support for resolving displacement and perceived “over population” in post-war Europe was channeled through agencies such as PICMME (subsequently ICEM). Since the end of the Cold War, IOM’s membership has come to include China and other states that impede the human right to leave one’s country, suggesting that members’ “demonstrated interest” in free movement can now be merely theoretical.

What’s in a mandate? Humanitarian action and the protection mandate issue

IOM has worked in relative anonymity for much of its history. One of the few widely known facts about the organization is that it lacks a formal protection mandate. What does this mean? The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), the central humanitarian coordination platform bringing together UN agencies, other IOs, and NGOs, offers a broad, influential definition of protection as “all activities aimed at obtaining full respect for the rights of the individual in accordance with the letter and the spirit of the relevant bodies of law.”¹³ A wide range of organizations involved in humanitarian action, both IOs and NGOs, understand themselves to have a responsibilit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• List of tables
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 A servant of state masters? IOM’s mandate, structure, and culture
• 2 An evolving humanitarian entrepreneur
• 3 IOM in action: contributions and controversies in Haiti and Libya
• 4 The UN migration agency? IOM–UN relations
• 5 Conclusion
• Selected bibliography
• Index