Throughout human history, migration has been a courageous expression of the individual’s will to overcome adversity and to live a better life. Today, globalization, together with advances in communications and transportation, has greatly increased the number of people, who have the desire and the capacity to move to other places.
This new era has created challenges and opportunities for societies throughout the world. It also has served to underscore the clear linkage between migration and development, as well as the opportunities it provides for co-development, that is, the concerted improvement of economic and social conditions at both origin and destination.
Migration draws increasing attention in the world nowadays. Mixed with elements of unforeseeability, emergency, and complexity, the challenges and difficulties of international migration require enhanced cooperation and collective action among countries and regions. The United Nations is actively playing a catalyst role in this area, with the aim of creating more dialogues and interactions within countries and regions, as well as propelling experience exchange and collaboration opportunities.
COVID-19 was the defining issue of 2020, and as the United Nations celebrates International Migrants Day today and considers how we might reimagine human mobility, we mark the contributions migrants are making and the virus’ impacts on their lives. The pandemic disproportionately affects migrants who often find themselves on the margins of society.
Despite caring for the sick and providing essential services, they are too often the first to lose their jobs and the last to be rehired, excluded from essential social services, unfairly ostracized as carriers of the disease and, in extreme cases, left as prey to those who would take advantage of their vulnerability.
Watch the videos below to hear the voices of those struggling to overcome xenophobia and discrimination, to return home in the face of global mobility restrictions and grapple with the impact of the downturn in remittances. We must ensure migrants are provided equitable access to national vaccine programmes and for nations to recommit themselves to the principle of cross-border and regional cooperation enshrined in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration to build prosperous, healthy and resilient communities.
Since the beginning of 2020, the Service for Foreigners Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina has registered 15,910 migrants, and the trend of decreasing newly arrived and registered migrants in Bosnia and Herzegovina has continued.
There are currently 6,977 migrants in temporary reception centers.
