Regional Roundtable on Irregular Migration
by Sea in the Asia-Pacific Region
Presented by:
Peter Elms
Immigration New Zealand
Focus on Prevention
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.
Supply & Demand
• 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
Influencing Push / Pull Factors
• 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 continued
• 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
Investigation / Intelligence
• 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
Public Awareness - Information Campaigns
• 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
Cooperation
• International agreements on combined prevention,
disruption and deterrence measures
• Both national and international
- Share information
- Share expertise
- Capacity building
Good News !
• 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