Regional Roundtable on Irregular Migration by Sea in the Asia-Pacific Region

Presented by:Peter Elms

Immigration New Zealand

Two broad concerns:

• Responding efficiently and humanely to an irregular migration event

• Preventing such events happening in the first place.

Other panellists will address the former; this presentation is on the latter.

Focus on Prevention

• What can we do, individually and collectively, to prevent irregular movements by sea?

• To do so we must reduce the role of people smugglers in our region

• By reducing the demand for the services of the smugglers it follows that the supply will reduce

• The question therefore for economies is how do we address our own push / pull factors that incentivise people to use people smugglers

Supply & Demand

• Addressing the environmental factors that push people to place their lives in the hands of smugglers

• Ensure refugee protection and determination processes are in place and working efficiently

• Provide refugee re-settlement opportunities to incentivise the use of legitimate processes

• Maintain effective immigration policies and border controls to deal effectively with illegal migration

Influencing Push / Pull Factors

• Criminalisation

• Ratification of the UNTOC and its protocols• on trafficking in person• Smuggling of migrants

• National legislation that makes people smuggling illegal

• Critical first steps

Influencing Push / Pull Factors continued

• National authorities properly trained and resourced to pursue people smuggling syndicates

• Intelligence agencies willing and able to focus on people smuggling ventures

• Sharing intelligence both domestically and internationally

Investigation / Intelligence

• To persuade people not to use the service of people smugglers

• Many lessons learned:­ Some messages work better than others­ Some methods of delivery work better­ Need to tailor to the audience­ Need to pool information develop best practice

Public Awareness - Information Campaigns

• International agreements on combined prevention, disruption and deterrence measures

• Both national and international­ Share information­ Share expertise­ Capacity building

Cooperation

• Bali Process is already contributing on all these fronts:­ International cooperation, including the RSO­ Also with UNHCR, IOM, UNODC­ Sharing information (including UNODC Voluntary

Reporting System)­ Workshop on UNTOC protocols

• How working on policy guides for national implementation­ Training on investigation/prosecution

• New links forming between RSO and JCLEC and other regional institutions

­ Intelligence : Forum hosted by New Zealand­ Information campaigns : some work in 2009; RSO

interested in developing a project

Good News !