 Hello. My name is Sebastian von Einziedl. I'm the director of the United Nations University Center for Policy Research. It is my distinct pleasure today to welcome Ambassador William Swing, the head of the International Organization for Migration, IOM. Ambassador Swing, before taking over as head of IOM, has been for five years the head of the UN's peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Monuk, the largest UN peacekeeping operation in history. Before joining the UN, Ambassador Swing has had a distinguished career as a UN diplomat, as a US diplomat, serving in six ambassadorial posts, including in distinctly uncushy positions in Liberia, Haiti, Nigeria, Congo, DRC, and South Africa. Welcome to UNU and thank you for joining us today. Thank you very much. Ambassador Swing, let me ask you the following question. IOM is an organization with a $1.5 billion operating budget that is responsible for one billion migrants worldwide. What is it among the multifaceted issues that migration poses that keeps you up at night? What is your number one priority? There are so many challenges, but I would say right now my biggest concern is to try to find ways to save the life of migrants because too many migrants are dying along the migratory route, both in the sea and in the desert and elsewhere. We've documented the deaths of 40,000 migrants since the year 2000, 22,000 in the Mediterranean alone. Last year, 5,000 died, which was double the number who died in 2013. And this clearly needs to stop. It need not be, but it's going to have to change at the level of policy if we can stop this. Now, the response by politicians when faced with refugee flows is often to call for tighter border controls. Yet many in the migration community would argue that these efforts are A, bound to fail and B, that hardened borders is what lies at the root of the increased numbers of migrant death. Do you agree? I think we obviously are in a period where not only do we have the largest human mobility in recorded history, but we have also the largest, the most widespread anti-migrant sentiment that we've seen in decades. And clearly by building more walls, tightening visa regimes and trying to restrict movement is simply not working. That's why we have all these deaths at the sea and in the desert. So I would say that what we need are more legal avenues of migration. We need to address the root causes of involuntary migration and don't forget that we now have 50 million forced migrants the most since the Second World War. All of that has to change and it can only change through policies and attitudes. And one of the big problems is that we have forgotten the historically positive nature of migration and we're in a period now where the migration narrative is eminently toxic. Now you have mentioned that in the Mediterranean alone there were over 4,000 migrant death in 2014. In response to one particularly grisly event in 2013 when over 300 migrants died near Lampedusa, Italy mounted a naval search and rescue operation that has since been taken over by the European Union. Now some European governments refuse to contribute and pay for this operation because they argue it actually encourages irregular migration, encourages irregular migrants to endeavor this very dangerous path across the Mediterranean. Do they have a point? Well let's take the last period of time since the first of January. Close to 4,000 people have tried to cross the Mediterranean. There was no Italian naval operation. There was no Marine Ostrom. So why did they come? They came because of push factors as opposed to a pull factor. Now important fact what the Italian operation did we must commend they've saved 170,000 lives since October 2013 until the end of 2014. Now those people now will not have this opportunity. Their lives will be lost. There'll be no option left for them. So it has to continue. The difficulty with Operation Triton is it is they don't have the mandate to save life. They have a mandate to protect borders. They don't have the assets. They have six ships compared to 32 and they don't have the budget. So it simply will not be a viable replacement. Along similar lines the United States, Australia, and some other countries have introduced policies that would process migrants either in their countries of origins, offshore, or in third countries. Meanwhile in Europe there are discussions under way to establish migrant processing centers in North Africa. Is that a solution? Well we actually were at the heart of that proposal. Both UNHCR and IOM proposed the establishment of migrant processing and reception centers principally in Libya. Now you understand why that's not working because Libya is sufficiently unstable now that you can't do that. But the idea would be you don't have to get on an unseaworthy vessel and take a risk to cross the Mediterranean because when you get to Lampeduz or Malta you're going to go into a migrant processing center. So our point was let's do this own shore in North Africa. Some of these people will qualify for protection under the 51 convention. Some are clearly economic migrants and a number of these would probably need to be sent back. And some of course are going to join their families in Scandinavia, particularly from Syria. But why take the risk in the Mediterranean? You could be processed there. But that is somewhat different from the other instance you mentioned in Australia. That's a different operation. How is that different? Well in Australia the objective as I understand it is to keep any boats from landing in Australia itself. So they're taken to places such as Nauru and now there is a proposal to move these those who wish to go to move them from Nauru to Cambodia. But that's somewhat different than what we propose to the Europeans for North Africa. You've argued before that sealing borders is not the right way forward. What is the solution? One are the migration processing centers. Another is to create more legal avenues. A third one is something that European is engaged in now which is a dialogue with the African Union in something that's called the cartoon process where countries of destination and origin work at this issue together. Those are all ways to handle this. But I think until we recognize that the whole situation has changed incredibly. And Europe which has been a continent of origin for four centuries has now become for the last four decades a continent of destination. And that requires psychological and political adjustments that simply haven't happened. Well one problem you're facing is that politicians around the world tend to show very little sympathy for the plight of migrants. How do you address that problem? Two ways. Number one we have to get back to the historical basis of migration which migration has always been historically positive. They brought in new ideas. They brought in high motivation. They have contributed across the board. They're not just getting access to public services. They go in and they contribute financially. So we have to start to change that narrative. But secondly I think countries that are not traditional migrant countries are going to have to learn to manage inexorably growing economic social religious and ethnic diversity because with an aging north and an unemployed youthful south people are going to arrive who don't look or speak exactly as you do but who might be brought to share the same values if they're properly welcomed and integrated. Now it's a long stretch I realize. Mayors understand this better than national politicians and so we will be trying to bring the mayors together in October this year to share ideas with one another as to how we can make this work at the grassroots level. I think that's what has to happen. Yet you're facing a rather un conducive trend of rising anti-immigrant sentiment around the world and especially in Europe that has only increased in the context of the spread of ISIS. How do you counter that? Well first of all we have to recognize these are these are fears that people have. It's fears coming out of the global economic downturn of 2008. Fear of loss of jobs. It's the fear that arises the main one you're mentioning from the post 9-11 security syndrome and it is also a reaction against globalization the fear of the loss of personal or national identity. We have to deal with all of this but we to do this we have to knock down the stereotypes. There is nothing on the record that shows that migrants have more of a criminal tendency or a criminal record than national is not at all it's usually the opposite. There's no stereotype there that says that migrants are bringing disease in so all of these have to be changed and that's going to take a long process how you do it governments have to take the lead they have to have public education and public information programs and for that you have to have political courage which unfortunately is in short supply. Now amidst all this focus on the concerns of the rich countries we often forget that over 85% of refugees and irregular migrants tend to end up in the developing world especially in countries that are bordering crisis regions in particular those around Syria. What are the implications of that? Well the implications are that every local problem national problem immediately becomes regional overnight. The second thing is we simply have to recognize that we have more forced displacement than at any time since the second world war you have 16.7 million refugees average time in a camp is 17 years we have too few countries that are prepared to become resettlement countries and those that are resettlement countries don't have large enough quotas so the other countries are left to hold this burden and we're not sharing the responsibility with them they need help. I went to Jordan and Lebanon and I said I came here worried about Syria and I returned worried about Lebanon and Jordan they each hosting more than a million refugees and Lebanon only has four million inhabitants four million inhabitants and so when people tell me in a population area of 500 million which is which is European Union we have 160,000 people who came north I say yes but that's manageable whereas in Lebanon it's becoming less and less manageable need to keep it in perspective indeed. Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about migration and development remittances is a particularly important factor here indeed remittances outstrip ODA by a factor 3 to 1 and it is of course particularly against this background that IOM has long lobbied for a reduction in costs of remittance transfers including in the discussions around the post-2015 development framework. Now it seems to me that those efforts are threatened by anti-matter laundering effort the focus on counterterrorism financing are you concerned? I think this is a red herring I think that the money that's going back is going to put food on the table put children in school and take care of the sick and the elderly we have no evidence that it's being misused my larger concern is exactly the one you mentioned people are paying too much money to get their money home 12 to 15 percent is not reasonable and certain areas like Africa are particularly affected they have even higher charges now if you have 450 billion dollars a year which as you say is two or three times that of ODA and you lose say 10 percent you've lost 45 billion dollars so we're in touch with the private sector and with the universal postal union to do pilot projects in places in Africa and South America to try to bring those costs well below 5 percent and I think through the postal service through mobile phone transfers it can be brought down because otherwise I think they're paying too high a price great a question on the plate