Potential Impact of the 4IR on Human Mobility

Lots of writing on the subject is regularly being produced such as this brilliant essay on the potential impact of the 4IR on human mobility or transhumance.  This latter would always be there as a natural breathing valve of an economy and the advent of Artificial Intelligence as a major segment of the anticipated Fourth Industrial Revolution would presumably help make it more as it were manageable, if not more controllable. .

Meanwhile, according to MIGRATION INFORMATION SOURCE “The year 2016 was a notable one for the migration world, marked by ongoing displacement crises, political upheaval, and policy developments on returns, integration, and border enforcement in countries of origin, transit, and destination. MPI experts highlight the biggest migration developments of the year in this countdown of the Top 10 Migration Issues of 2016.”  And it lists as Top 10 of 2016 – Issue #1: Dawn of New Migration Reality Brings Focus on Borders, Returns, and Integration . 

The Image above is of REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol

What does the Fourth Industrial Revolution mean for migration?

Written by :

• Sanjiv Rai, Founder and Chief Solver, Inverted Ideas Lab
• Mariah Levin, Community Lead, Civil Society, World Economic Forum.
• Khalid Koser, Executive Director, Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF)
• Richard Eldridge, CEO, Lenddo Limited

Published on June 28, 2017.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is unfolding at a time when human mobility is increasing and, in many instances, becoming more precarious. Last year, the world saw 250 million international migrants, only 21 million of whom qualified as refugees under the UN Refugee Convention. Within countries, the rate of internal migration from rural areas to cities has also been increasing, with urbanization estimates reaching 66% by 2050.

Indeed, there are 270 million internal migrants in China alone. Considering existing migration trends, the impact of more extreme weather on economies and livelihoods, and countries’ constraints in dealing with migration effectively, we simply cannot afford to overlook the potential of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies in supporting safe, orderly and regular migration.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) represents new ways in which technology becomes embedded within societies, for example through robotics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology. The 4IR has implications for global migration in a multitude of ways, some of which have been experienced in the past. Concretely, the 4IR has the potential to create business and job opportunities for migrants that never existed before, especially if they receive the right training, for example, on robots and their myriad set of applications. It also opens avenues for entrepreneurship, since migrant entrepreneurs are at the forefront of technological innovation (Elon Musk, for example, is a migrant).

At the same time, disruptions to the labour market inherent in any industrial revolution have generated a high level of distrust and scepticism around the benefits of migration. Indeed, lower-skilled workers are positioned to lose their jobs in the face of labour-saving 4IR advances, and migrants are not only at risk of this, but also blamed for precipitating lower labour standards by accepting less attractive employment.

But the 4IR is also changing migration and perceptions of migration beyond the implications observed in the past. From migration management and border control to directing migration flows and facilitating migrant integration, we should expect to see significant changes to migration policies and practices in the coming decade as a result of specific 4IR technologies.

Here are some examples:

Applying drone technology

We have already seen the way in which digital and smartphone technology has altered the migrant experience: two of the first questions migrants and refugees ask when arriving in a new country are how to get a SIM card and where to connect to WIFI. Smartphones are now seen by migrants as essential tools in navigating challenging journeys safely and preparing support networks for their arrivals.

While migrants and refugees use GPS and social media communications applications to monitor and decide on their migration paths, international organizations and NGOs are increasingly using drone technology in humanitarian activities. In fact, the usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) has increasingly been recognized as an essential tool for humanitarian action since drones are particularly useful for mapping, delivering goods to remote locations and assessing and monitoring damage and change. They have increasingly been deployed for humanitarian purposes since 2013 when the United Nations launched its first surveillance experiment in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda.

Governments are also aware of the potential use of drones for migration management. Starting in 2005, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began to use drones domestically in an effort to track migration across its borders; there are now plans to equip the border service with smaller, lightweight drones capable of identifying individuals using through facial recognition or other biometric technology within a three-mile range. The idea is to enable CBP agents to launch and track multiple humans on foot, horseback or in vehicles.

Meanwhile, the European Union has also taken steps to invest in a fleet of drones with video, infrared sensors and chemical detection to provide real-time data on migrant flows. In the Mediterranean, drones have already been used by European government and NGOs to facilitate the rescue missions of migrants.

Thus, the potential for drones in the realm of migration is promising and still largely to be explored. However, this type of tracking raises a number of ethical issues frequently flagged in debates around balancing national security interests with individual rights and freedoms. In particular, the use of drones for migration surveillance challenges individual rights to privacy and is seen by critics to undermine civil liberties more broadly. Legal scrutiny around the use of this technology must go hand in hand with its deployment.

How AI can strengthen migration policy

As in many areas, policy on migration lags behind technological trends in ways that undermine the potential gains of the phenomenon. Artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning applied to relevant migration questions could help illuminate successful approaches to anticipating migration flows, harnessing skills, and better understanding the power of remittances. AI machine learning has the potential to use a wealth of data, frequently crowdsourced or publically available, to look for data patterns and correlations that may indicate future human mobility flows.

This type of analysis starts from examining historical and current migration patterns and understanding related triggers. It can move policy makers closer to unravelling complexity around the origin of migration flows. If the data is high quality and appropriately incorporates the possibility of a political, economic and/or social “disruption” that might change the predictive trajectory, applying machine learning to migration trends could help map future migration flows. The result could help countries and communities prepare migrant integration strategies more effectively.

Likewise, these predictive maps could provide helpful information in further managing migration flows. Coupling these migration data with labour market information, such as skills gaps, could provide migrants with a better idea of where their skills would be valued, and therefore where to plan their moves. Supporting migrants to make informed decisions about migration is perhaps the next stage of evolution of “chatbots” that have supported refugees arriving in Europe. The potential for better matching skills or opportunity and human resources offers to create a new narrative around migration and its potential benefits.

At this stage, there have been some attempts at using artificial intelligence for migration-related matters, largely in crisis situations. One of the first examples of this was Ushahidi, which used real time, crowdsourced reports from Facebook and Twitter to develop a crisis map after the Haiti Earthquake in 2010. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have since been applied to various crises settings, such as Nepal, and even to help victims cope psychologically with the effects of war, such as in Syria. However, there remains incredible opportunity to elucidate trends that could lead to better migrant integration and outcomes for society.

AI could be also a crucial part of the activities implemented by organizations during displacement or after settlement in new countries. For example, running mandatory AI-based skills assessment and offering training on such technologies and assistance on entrepreneurship for migrants and refugees could unleash their full potential, helping them to rebuild their lives. It could also counterbalance the perceived precipitation of labour standards, since migrants would not work on precarious and low-productivity sectors that largely mismatch their skills, but would allow them to help the host country to prosper.

How Fintech supports integration

As migration around the world increases, one of the most pressing needs is for the availability of a full range of cost efficient, convenient financial services to assist effective integration of migrants in host nations.

However, in many countries the financial services sector is not even able to serve the needs of many of its own citizens, and the situation for many migrants is even worse.

Migrants face hardships across many fronts – from the basic opening of bank accounts without the required documents for KYC (Know-Your-Customer requirements) to difficulties receiving or sending money, and often at exorbitant rates. Migrants are often not able to have access to convenient ways to pay bills, access insurance, or even obtain credit or loans to improve their lives or invest for the future – all these services remain a dream.

The 4IR, for the first time, presents a significant opportunity to include migrants in the financial system quickly and efficiently in a way that has not even been experienced by many of the host countries’ own nationals. Technological solutions pave the way to both disrupt the way traditional financial services have been delivered and at the same time enable banks to innovate and provide exciting new products and services to address real customer needs.

Much of the early innovation has come from Fintech companies that are disrupting the traditional way of doing things. Transferwise, originally a payments company, has recently created a borderless bank. Alipay and Tencent have led a financial revolution in Asia and innovative companies like Lenddo use big data and AI to allow financial institutions to deliver products and services to underserved markets in a sustainable way.

Some governments such as India and Estonia are also leading the way with their government led digital initiatives resulting in fast-growing financial inclusion. Also, some international organizations, such as UNCHR in partnership with IrisGuard and Cairo Amman Bank in Jordan, are using innovative hi-tech solutions such as iris recognition to secure access of refugees to financial assistance, not only including refugees in the financial system but also increasing the efficiency and efficacy of humanitarian aid.

The opportunity exists – and it will be interesting to see how other countries can learn from these examples and whether incumbent banks and other financial institutions can deliver services to the growing number of migrants that demand them; or whether it will take disruptive Fintech companies or innovative international organizations and governments to grant access to critical services that are taken for granted by many of us.

Smarter migration through the Fourth Industrial Revolution

In the past decade concern over the risks of migration have often made it harder for people to grasp the potential benefits. The 4IR offers a unique opportunity to expand and recreate such cases of success, assisting the host society and migrants to thrive together.

In considering future applications of 4IR technologies, there are definite ethical issues, like data privacy and margins of error, with which to contend. However, the promise of smarter migration is one which the international community, individual nations and businesses need to realize in order to achieve a more peaceful and sustainable world.

Thousands of Qatari camels and sheep being expelled from Saudi

The world media seemed recently to be moved by camels suffering following the sudden hardening of attitudes either sides of the Qatar – Saudi Arabia border line.  In effect after the severing of all diplomatic and travels ties between these countries as well as with the UAE, other land border; Bahrain being an island, it is not only human beings that are painfully enduring the fallout but animals too. Qatari camels owners customarily let their herds graze on neighbouring Saudi lands, but with this severing of all travels, cross-border transportation came to a halt. Thousands of Qatari camels and sheep being expelled from Saudi Arabia were witnessed being herded from Saudi Arabia and led towards.

Qatar. media reported that in the process, animals suffering included death because of the lack of water and shelter near Abu Samra, the unique passage post between the 2 countries.  Those camels and sheep that have been expelled, many of them starving and dehydrated were welcomed back in Qatar with all necessary care and attention. 

An article of The Independent of June 21, 2017 written by Bethan McKernan Beirut, @mck_beth, gives us a clear and unbiased picture of the tragic situation that is made worse by the harsh climate this time of the year.  we republish excerpts of this article with our compliments to the author and thanks to the publisher.

Saudi Arabia deports Qatari camels and sheep as diplomatic feud continues

Livestock grazing across the border from tiny Qatar on rented land ordered back as diplomatic spat shows no signs of abating

At least 12,000 Qatari-owned camels and sheep have been ordered out of Saudi Arabia as both sides in the Gulf diplomatic crisis refuse to back down.

Temporary shelters, water and food have been set up for 7,000 camels and 5,000 sheep forced to trek back to the kingdom across the desert border, Qatari newspaper The Peninsula reported on Tuesday, while website al-Raya put the figure at 25,000.

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment said that more permanent accommodation was being prepared.

Qatar is home to around 22,000 camels, which are raised for racing as well as for meat and milk, but many herdsmen in the tiny kingdom rent pastures in much larger neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

The latest move from Riyadh has triggered angry reactions among Qatari farmers.

“We just want to live out our days, to go to Saudi Arabia and take care of our camels and go back and take care of our family,” Ali Magareh, 40, told Reuters.

“We don’t want to be involved in these political things. We are not happy,” he added.

A woman and boy walk past a Qatar Airways branch in the Saudi capital of Riyadh (AFP/Getty)

The farmers are the latest victims in the escalating spat, which began 5 June when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut all diplomatic ties and suspended air and sea links with Doha, accusing it of supporting terrorism and controversial political groups. The decision has since been adopted by several other Muslim nations.

Qatar vehemently denies the charges. Tentative reconciliation efforts led by delegations from Kuwait, as well as encouragement from Turkey, the US State Department and UN, have so far come to nothing.

Qatari citizens were given two weeks to leave the affected countries, turning the lives of thousands of families upside down, and almost all Qatar Airways flights are now facing lengthy diversions.

Inside the country, which imports 80 per cent of its food, panic over food and fuel shortages have led to empty supermarket shelves and stockpiling.

Iran, a secondary target of the diplomatic stand-off, began cargo flights of up to 100 tons of fruit and vegetables a day to Doha on Sunday.

The crisis, which shows no signs of abating, could have manifold economic and political effects for the Middle East – as well as alter the course of the region’s many conflicts.

 

Qatar will not Negotiate with Arab States during Blockade

Qatar will not Negotiate with Arab States during Blockade unless they reverse their measures,” Qatar Foreign Affairs minister was reported as saying by the Saudi owned and Dubai based TV channel Al Arabiya on June 19, 2017.  This was presumably in response to the non-equivocal statement of the UAE’s minister of FA who confirmed that his country together with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt are standing firm on their decision of 2 weeks ago to isolate Qatar from the rest of the GCC countries and that this isolation could last years.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times‘ Gideon Rachman warned its readership that the Qatar crisis could have global implications before adding that the Gulf States have been untouched by Middle Eastern turmoil but that is changing.  Elaborating further, the author sustains that for the past six years, there have been two Arab worlds.  “The world of violence and tragedy; and the world of glitz and globalisation.  Syria, Iraq, Libya and, to a lesser extent, Egypt — have been engulfed by conflict.  But Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai have prospered as global hubs for travel, leisure, business and finance.”  And that “The booming Gulf metropolises seemed untouched by the violence in the rest of the Middle East.  They even profited indirectly, as safe havens in a region in turmoil.”

All that is fine or at least up until the author wonders whether the glitzy world of the Gulf could collapse in the same way it rapidly climbed to the shining lights of the world of fame and fortune.

In the meantime, there seems to be a wall as advanced by Gideon Rachman that is rammed down by this sudden irruption of the Qatar crisis of a blockade by its neighbours.

To well understand the underlying culture, it is worth remembering that since time immemorial, there has always been some sort of divide between the nomads and sedentarized populations of the Arab World.  It is no surprise that all Arab countries of today having recently gone through historical phases of Ottoman domination and rule, European domination and rule followed by independence through a well-publicized panarbism and self-rule via differing forms of governance.  Hence countries belonging to one or the other group have settled into on one hand monarchies, sultanates, emirates and on the other republics.  These latter are as well known to all in a very derelict situations but the other up until this Qatar crisis have with the advent of oil shone in their multi-faceted exploits of surging into the international limelight.  The latest exploit of individual countries are countless but most importantly is the Gulf wide exploit of the rail project development that should span traffic from Kuwait to Oman, along the western shore of the Arab-Persian Gulf.  This project as well as many others all in and / or around Qatar such as the Expo 2020 in Dubai as well as the Qatar 2022 World Cup will no doubt bear some consequences of this crisis.  Referring to the map of the Gulf above, could the proposed Alternative extension linking Qatar to the rest of the GCC pay the price of such regional skirmish.

Tesla to market its electric cars in the MENA region

Electric cars in the MENA region ?

According to Wikipedia, Tesla, Inc. (formerly named Tesla Motors) is an American automaker, energy storage company, and solar panel manufacturer based in Palo Alto, California. The company was initially founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, although the company also considers Elon Musk, JB Straubel, and Ian Wright amongst its co-founders. With Tesla to market its electric cars in the MENA region, the reactions did not take time to come out into the open as per the proposed articles of the local media. 

Tesla Model X in Dubai

In the current conjecture, SME Advisor Middle East, a consulting firm aimed at business owners and senior executives across the GCC came up with an article on Tesla’s ambitious promotional campaign in the Gulf reproduced here.

Elon Musk’s announcement officially introducing Tesla’s zero-emission e-car Models S and X to Dubai is all the rage this week.

But why all the hoopla? The Tesla is by no means an easy buy at an estimated price tag of AED 275,000 for the sedan version and AED 344,000 for the SUV. But this is the UAE. Looks matter, and so does 0 to 60. This is where people can drive and own vehicles that are considered a dream elsewhere. Truth be told, the Tesla is probably just going to be another expensive car on UAE roads.
Sustainability has been the UAE Government’s favourite buzzword for a few years now. In 2015, the government linked domestic petrol and diesel prices to the global market; removing subsidies that had cost US$1bn a year over the last decade. Besides the positive fiscal impact, the move was part of a wider realignment of the energy policy geared to minimising the UAE’s carbon footprint. Just last month, the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy (DSCE), the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) and the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) announced new targets to cut down carbon emissions by increasing the green mobility share; aiming for one in every ten cars on Dubai roads to be either a hybrid or fully electric. A major UAE bank has just announced a special loan to allow residents to buy and drive electric and hybrid cars of their choice. And the Dubai Taxi Corporation (DTC) has just ordered 200 Tesla e-cars for its fleet.

Is the trend evident yet?

The shift to sustainability is happening now, and not a moment too soon. The transition from being a petro-economy to one based on a mix of predominantly clean energy sources won’t happen overnight; but it is happening. Implications will be far-reaching – affecting purchase choices, carmakers, energy companies, insurers, health care, government funding, and more. Value shifts as a new ecosystem of mobility emerges.

Which is why Musk’s announcement has echoed so loudly. The Tesla founder didn’t just announce the introduction of his cars in the UAE; he promised to aid the setting up of a whole e-car ecosystem. Pledging tens of millions of dollars in the UAE for charging, service and support infrastructure is not just a huge challenge; it could perhaps be the catalyst the country needs to start buying electric. With Tesla, sustainable personal transport has finally arrived.

The UAE has had a long-standing love affair with cars, and has been a lot slower in introducing electric vehicles on its roads. The good news is that it is still ahead of other countries in the region. Fossil fuel is only going to get scarcer, and prices are only going to go higher. The introduction of the e-car might not spark a tsunami transition in buying habits. But what it will begin is a rising tide of sorts that will expedite the UAE Government’s efforts to shift its dependence on oil – to clean, renewable energy sources.  And will Tesla be the car that drives us into a sustainable future?  If Elon Musk has his way, it will.

Tesla’s drive was also reviewed by AMEinfo and the following article was posted on 16 February 2017.

3 reasons why MENA is not ready for Tesla

Tesla announced a regional debut, but are we ready for it?. (Image: Alamy)

• Large parts of MENA region are still struggling with basics
• Many countries in region don’t have the necessary infrastructure
• High cost of such vehicles may be another hindrance

Tesla, the manufacturer of autonomous electric vehicles, made headlines this week when it announced a market debut for the Middle East region, through Dubai.

And buying has already started. The emirate’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) signed on Monday an agreement on the sidelines of the World Government Summit to buy 200 Tesla vehicles. The vehicles would be fitted with multiple autonomous driving technologies.

Tesla also started accepting online orders through its website, with initial deliveries expected this summer.

The company also opened a pop-up store in Dubai Mall, the world’s largest shopping centre, allowing potential buyers to experience Tesla and learn about benefits of ownership. In addition to its Dubai activities, the automaker plans to open a store and a service centre in Abu Dhabi by 2018.

These moves seem to signal the major advent of autonomous vehicles in the UAE and the wider MENA region, but are we really ready?

No room for growth

Tesla’s announced activities are currently limited to the emirate of Dubai and near-future plans include the UAE as a whole, but it has not yet announced any plans for other countries in Middle East, or the larger MENA region. While Musk said there are plans to expand to other Gulf countries, nothing has been officially announced.

However, the UAE is relatively small market in size compared with the larger MENA region. Apart from a few neighbouring countries still benefitting from oil dollars, many other nations in the MENA region is still struggling with basics; either picking up the pieces from political uprisings, or embroiled in civil war and terror threats, making them not the greatest markets in terms of opportunity.

This could well be the reason why Musk kept the MENA region as a stop after China, as the latter was more of a priority.

(Tesla targets Middle East drive with Dubai debut)

Infrastructure

Tesla also brought its sophisticated Supercharger and Destination charging network to the emirate. It opened two Supercharging locations at The Last Exit in Jebel Ali and in Masdar City, allowing drivers to recharge their vehicles in minutes rather than hours. UAE is already home to a number of Tesla’s Destination chargers, which are available at 26 locations across the UAE, including hotels and shopping malls.

By the end of the year, Tesla will open five additional Supercharger locations, enabling long distance travel across every route into and out of the country.

As we have the UAE’s sophisticated infrastructure, including smooth roads and services needed for maintaining and operating the charging centres, such luxuries don’t exist in other MENA countries.

Some countries are just now looking to overhaul their infrastructure, such as Kuwait which announced projects worth $15.6 billion for financial year 2017-2018, or Lebanon, which just received $200 million from the World Bank Group for road repairs.

Other countries also suffer from deadly infrastructural roadblocks that cannot be solved through a few projects, but rather need a comprehensive urban development plan and time for execution, such as Egypt, with its traffic clogs and overpopulation.

 

Price

Tesla made its regional debut with two flagship cars, Model S and Model X, priced at AED287,000 and AED356,700 for the basic models, excluding taxes and government fees, according to Tesla’s website.

While the UAE has one of the highest GDPs in the Arab world, estimated by the World Bank at $370bn in 2015, other countries lag behind as they struggle with political and economic instability.

For instance, Lebanon’s GDP stands at $47bn, Jordan’s is at $37bn and in North Africa, there are higher GDPs but much larger populations, such as Algeria, whose GDP stands at $166bn, but the country had a population of 39m, as of 2013.

However, Tesla seems to be aware of this factor, which is why its plans for the foreseeable future are limited to the UAE.

Tesla Model X in Dubai

 

Further reading as proposed by AMEinfo.

• (Tesla targets Middle East drive with Dubai debut)
• (Tesla taxis to rule Dubai’s streets?)

 

Ups and Downs in the Global Economy

Ups and downs in the global economy, and / or the economy of the large countries blocks or the small ones, there seems always to have trade businesses that are vulnerable to any adverse winds. Would the Brexit vote and a new man in the White House have any bearing on the business of trading? With all the books and discrete writings since Neanderthal times, on trade, fair or not and those many varieties in between, we have still got things to discuss such as in the proposed article written by Arancha González Laya, Executive Director, International Trade Center and published by the WEF on Thursday 9 February 2017.

What about what is happening in the MENA’s GCC countries with Christine Lagarde of the IMF visiting Dubai who said yesterday that Algeria was “a good example” in budgetary management.  Thoughts ?

‘Inward-looking trade policies invite retaliation’ – IArancha Gonzales Laya, ITC

The above Image is of REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

The future of trade could be good, bad – or just plain ugly

The outlook for global trade cooperation is darkening. Amid the sluggish recovery from the global financial crisis of 2008-09, trade and globalization have in many advanced economies become lightning rods for public anxiety over diminished economic prospects, rapid technological change, immigration and more broadly discomfort with the pace of social change.

In these countries, the social licence on which open markets rest has become fragile. The result: sustained pressure on the international economic system that has underpinned seven decades of peace and unprecedented prosperity. We today run the risk of shifting from a rules-based trading system to one based on deals and power politics.

Some of the anti-trade sentiment is the result of rising wealth inequality and stagnating real wages. Policy and business elites did not speak frankly about the unequal distribution of benefits from trade, and failed to adequately accompany market-opening with good domestic policies to equip displaced workers to upskill, adjust and share in the new opportunities being created. Yet technological change is responsible for far more of the job losses than imports of goods and services: trade has simply become a more identifiable scapegoat.

However unpopular trade may be in some quarters, the fact is that trade does improve productivity and growth in aggregate. If governments start to go it alone on trade, it will become harder, not easier, to generate the jobs and rising incomes that angry electorates want. Inward-looking unilateral trade policies invite retaliation. The open global economy has enabled the largest-ever reduction of extreme poverty. Closing markets would close off prospects for poor countries to trade their way out of poverty. And the singular lesson of the 1930s is that zero-sum approaches to economic relations lead to trade wars, economic stagnation and, ultimately, conflict.

A World Economic Forum council focusing on the future of international trade has identified three potential scenarios for how the upcoming years might unfold. Borrowing from Sergio Leone, we call them “the good, the bad and the ugly”. The risks are firmly on the downside, but it is not too late for governments, businesses and civil society to work together to arrest the slide: to choose reason over friction, cooperation over conflict, and multilateralism over unilateralism. Responsive and responsible trade and investment policies are possible, but it will take hard work at home and in the global arena.

Further reading . . .

• Trade is cutting poverty and boosting incomes. Here’s why .
• Economic nationalism is on the rise, but the future of trade lies with cities .
• The era of trade agreements is over. Should we miss them ?

Trump’s strategy on Immigration from the MENA

From time immemorial, transhumance of one shape or another, in the Middle East, has been a common fact of life and still is to this day. Trump’s strategy on Immigration from the MENA is these days not exactly that different from those known throughout the region’s History. 

In effect, the region’s history as beautifully introduced by Lonely Planet goes like this:

Although rock art dating back to 10,000 BC lies hidden amid the desert monoliths of the Jebel Acacus in Libya, little is known about the painters or their nomadic societies, which lived on the outermost rim of the Middle East.

The enduring shift from nomadism to more-sedentary organised societies began in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq) and the Nile River Valley of Ancient Egypt.

In about 5000 BC a culture known as Al-Ubaid first appeared in Mesopotamia. We known little about it except that its influence eventually spread down what is now the coast of the Gulf. Stone-Age artefacts have also been found in Egypt‘s Western Desert, Israel‘s Negev Desert and in the West Bank town of Jericho.

Sometime around 3100 BC the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were unified under Menes, ushering in 3000 years of Pharaonic rule in the Nile Valley. The Levant (present-day Lebanon, Syria and Israel and the Palestinian Territories) was well settled by this time, and local powers included the Amorites and the Canaanites. In Mesopotamia it was the era of Sumer, which had arisen in around 4000 BC and became arguably the world’s first great civilisation. [ . . .] Read more:http://www.lonelyplanet.com/middle-east/history#ixzz4XQcYAQ5a

This article of The Conversation of January 31, 2017 written by Gerasimos Tsourapas, Lecturer in Middle East Politics, Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham draws a fair picture of the present state of affairs and concludes that indeed:

Trump’s strategy on immigration comes straight from the Middle East playbook

 

Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon protest against the war in Yemen in October 2016. Nabil Mounzer/EPA

It is easy to ascribe Donald Trump’s recent policy decisions on immigration to his temperament. The US president’s executive order temporarily halting the country’s refugee programme and suspending visas for citizens of seven, Muslim-majority countries, are in line with his xenophobic rhetoric on the campaign trail.

The pressure on Mexico to finance the construction of a wall on the US-Mexican border is also a direct follow-up to his vitriolic statements on “bad hombres”.

It is equally tempting to blame the new administration’s immigration policy on Trump’s lack of respect for the rule-of-law and his need for continuing media and public attention. Particularly so as Trump has proposed policies that are unlikely to reduce any terrorist threat and can be easily overturned by federal courts.

But the history of Middle Eastern politics teaches us to approach immigration policies less as consequences of elites’ personalities, and more as instruments in the quest for political power. Both Trump’s policy on Mexico and his recent executive orders are reminiscent of measures adopted by Middle Eastern elites as bilateral strategies of coercion.

Remittance and visa restrictions

In early 2016, Saudi Arabia threatened to impose limits on the amount of money Lebanese migrants could send back home as a way of pressuring Lebanon into clamping down on Hezbollah. The Saudis, and other Gulf states, having declared Hezbollah a terrorist organisation in March 2016, realised that they possessed an effective, and relatively cost-free, mechanism of exerting pressure on Lebanon, which relies on migration to the Gulf Cooperation Council states for 70% of its remittance income.

Muammar Gaddafi used migration controls as part of his geopolitical strategy. Mohamed Messara/EPA

A few decades ago, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi would frequently implement – or threaten to implement – controls on Egyptian workers’ remittances as a way of putting pressure on the Egyptian government. When Egyptian president Anwar Sadat announced the creation of a Unified Political Command with Syria and Sudan in 1977, Gaddafi announced that “Sadat, in his behaviour, intends to oblige us” to act against Egyptians. Libya duly ceased the issuance of new work visas as authorities expelled thousands of Egyptian workers.

If this strategy sounds familiar, it is because it featured prominently in Trump’s presidential campaign agenda. In March 2016, Trump sent a two-page memo to the Washington Post detailing how he would threaten to halt illegal migrants’ money transfers to Mexico unless the country paid for the construction of the wall. “It’s an easy decision for Mexico,” Trump wrote. “Make a one-time payment of US$5-$10 billion to ensure that US$24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year.”

Deportations, Saudi style

Beyond remittance and migration restrictions, Middle East elites have also used deportation as a strategy of coercion amid neighbourhood tension. When Yemen failed to denounce the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait at the UN Security Council (where it was a non-permanent member) in September 1990, Saudi Arabia expelled around 800,000 Yemenis over the following two months. Other Arab states followed Saudi’s example and deported more Yemenis. The domestic upheaval that ensued in Yemen and the collapse of migrant remittances had destabilising effects that paved the way for the 1994 Yemeni Civil War.

Palestinians in Kuwait had a similar fate, and the entire community faced discrimination and, consequently, mass deportations when Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat failed to denounce the Iraqi invasion in 1990.

Trump’s executive order barring entry to citizen from seven Musim-majority countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen – needs to be understood through the lens of the US administration’s immigration strategy. This will undoubtedly become much clearer in the new few weeks, but the Washington Post has already identified how the ban excludes any country where the Trump Organisation has business interests. Though it’s worth pointing out that the seven countries were initially singled out for extra visa checks during the Obama administration.

Beyond the human cost involved in the use of immigration policy as a geopolitical strategy, the US administration should keep in mind a second lesson from the Middle East experience: target states often devise a retaliatory strategy. This may involve countermeasures or, in the case of Egypt and Libya, a border war in 1977. Iran has already declared it would ban entry to US citizens in response to Trump’s actions, while the New York Times has begun talking of the making of a trade war with China. Not surprisingly, the number of voices criticising Trump’s strategy as bad foreign policy is increasing daily.

 

Disclosure statement : Gerasimos Tsourapas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

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University of Birmingham provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

The Conversation UK receives funding from Hefce, Hefcw, SAGE, SFC, RCUK, The Nuffield Foundation, The Ogden Trust, The Royal Society, The Wellcome Trust, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and The Alliance for Useful Evidence, as well as sixty five university members.

 

Dubai’s infrastructure and liberal government policies

According to the Government of Dubai, Dubai has changed dramatically over the last three decades, becoming a major business centre with a more dynamic and diversified economy. Dubai enjoys a strategic location and serves as the biggest re-exporting centre in the Middle East.   Low logistical and operational costs and Dubai’s infrastructure and liberal government policies attract investors in a big way. Activities such as trade, transport, tourism, industry and finance have shown steady growth and helped the economy to achieve a high degree of expansion and diversification.

This government in its policy of diversification away from oil of the country’s economy has pledged that trade, transportation, communication, and financial services business though moderate throughout 2016 would most probably gather pace 2017.

In the meantime, its flag carrier Emirates, refer our article Brexit and the Emirates Airline, seems lately to encounter some difficulties as highlighted by the following Bloomberg’s article.  Excerpts of it are reproduced here.

The above image is of Photographer Greg White for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Is Emirates Airline Running Out of Sky?

It flies the fanciest product on the biggest planes on the longest routes. There might not be much more room to soar

[. . .] Dubai International runs at full speed 24 hours a day to help Emirates serve a network that spans from Buenos Aires to Christchurch, New Zealand.

by Matthew Campbell on January 5, 2017, 5:01 AM GMT

The airline, which is based in Dubai and owned by its government, has become the world’s largest long-haul carrier by never relaxing its grip—on employees, on airplane manufacturers, or on its own ambitions. Emirates recently configured a plane to seat 615 passengers, a record, and flies the world’s most epic nonstop route, an 8,824-mile arc from Dubai to Auckland. Emirates is essentially the only buyer of the largest commercial airliner, the Airbus A380, which it gilds with stand-up cocktail bars and in-flight showers. For every flight departing Dubai, as cabin crew head to their airplanes, the last room they traverse is a hall with mirrors on one side and windows to the tarmac on the other. The space allows workers to inspect themselves for perfection against a backdrop of government-owned taxiways thick with Emirates jets. That’s the airline, in one image: glamour and ambition in a framework of absolute control. . .

 

Since 1985, Emirates has grown from a two-plane operation at a desert airstrip into a force whose every movement rumbles through global aviation. The airline’s growth is inseparable from that of Dubai, with both straining the laws of financial and physical gravity. The company’s chairman is Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the uncle of Dubai’s absolute monarch. He also runs the airport authority, the aviation regulator, and the city’s largest bank, should Emirates ever need a loan. Out in the desert, a half-hour drive from the coast’s skyscrapers and malls, the government is building a $32 billion, five-runway megahub precisely to Emirates’ specifications. Its ambitions are consonant with its name: Dubai World Central. The project will have a capacity of 220 million passengers per year, four times the number that New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport serves today. Two-thirds of humanity lives within the radius of an eight-hour flight. Among industry veterans, the airline’s rise inspires a respectful awe. “Emirates is unprecedented,” says Tony Tyler, a former chief executive officer of Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific. “There’s never been anything as huge.”

Yet as Emirates dictates new standards of technology, luxury, and range, it’s finding that more and more is beyond its mastery. Conceived as a titanic bet on the growth of what development economists call the Global South—the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America—the airline is at risk if those emerging markets don’t, in fact, emerge. Emirates in May reported its first-ever annual revenue decline and is cutting some of its plans for growth amid slackening demand from sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey, and Brazil. The slump has industry analysts wondering how Emirates will fill the staggering number of planes it has on order. The company has agreed to buy 50 A380s and 174 Boeing 777s, adding to the 92 and 148, respectively, it currently flies. By comparison, British Airways operates 12 A380s, and American Airlines, Delta, and United have zero.

 

The bigger threat may lie in the U.S., the world’s most lucrative travel market, where Emirates has been expanding aggressively. It flies to 11 cities, including Orlando, Boston, Seattle, and Dallas. Led by Delta, the U.S. Big Three are intensifying a lobbying campaign against Emirates and its smaller Persian Gulf rivals, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways, collectively the ME3, seeking to curtail their access to American airports unless “unfair subsidies” are eliminated. Their argument, that deep-pocketed foreigners are threatening American jobs by flooding the market with subsidized capacity, was once seen in business circles as a long shot—but it happens to resonate precisely with President-elect Donald Trump’s stated view of the world. Similar efforts are afoot in Europe.

Those challenges may make the world less hospitable than ever to a company whose marketing projects a sunny globalism. With Trump and his ilk ascendant, one Emirates ad sums up a corporate ethos that feels increasingly at odds with the times: “Tomorrow thinks borders are so yesterday.” . . .

 

Net Migration to the UK is at an all-time High

The BBC today  reported that net migration to the UK is at an all-time high, reaching 330,000 in the year to March, the Office for National Statistics has said.  The figure – the difference between the number entering the country and those leaving – is more than three times higher than the government’s target. 

McKinsey has produced this article on the topic of migration of people within their own countries and / or from one country onto another for reasons that are very often quite understandable.  As per this article and with reference to McKinsey’s proposed graph sourced through the UN Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs and others, one can see that  with respect to movement of populations, globalisation as it were of people is definitely at work. 

Global migration’s impact and opportunity

By Jonathan Woetzel, Anu Madgavkar, Khaled Rifai, Frank Mattern, Jacques Bughin, James Manyika, Tarek Elmasry, Amadeo Di Lodovico, and Ashwin Hasyagar

Migration has become a flashpoint for debate in many countries. But McKinsey Global Institute research finds that it generates significant economic benefits—and more effective integration of immigrants could increase those benefits.

Migration is a key feature of our increasingly interconnected world. It has also become a flashpoint for debate in many countries, which underscores the importance of understanding the patterns of global migration and the economic impact that is created when people move across the world’s borders. A new report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), People on the move: Global migration’s impact and opportunity, aims to fill this need.

Refugees might be the face of migration in the media, but 90 percent of the world’s 247 million migrants have moved across borders voluntarily, usually for economic reasons. Voluntary migration flows are typically gradual, placing less stress on logistics and on the social fabric of destination countries than refugee flows. Most voluntary migrants are working-age adults, a characteristic that helps raise the share of the population that is economically active in destination countries.

By contrast, the remaining 10 percent are refugees and asylum seekers who have fled to another country to escape conflict and persecution. Roughly half of the world’s 24 million refugees are in the Middle East and North Africa, reflecting the dominant pattern of flight to a neighboring country. But the recent surge of arrivals in Europe has focused the developed world’s attention on this issue. A companion report, Europe’s new refugees: A road map for better integration outcomes, examines the challenges and opportunities confronting individual countries.

While some migrants travel long distances from their origin countries, most migration still involves people moving to neighboring countries or to countries in the same part of the world (exhibit). About half of all migrants globally have moved from developing to developed countries—indeed, this is the fastest-growing type of movement. Almost two-thirds of the world’s migrants reside in developed countries, where they often fill key occupational shortages. From 2000 to 2014, immigrants contributed 40 to 80 percent of labor-force growth in major destination countries.

Exhibit

Moving more labor to higher-productivity settings boosts global GDP. Migrants of all skill levels contribute to this effect, whether through innovation and entrepreneurship or through freeing up natives for higher-value work. In fact, migrants make up just 3.4 percent of the world’s population, but MGI’s research finds that they contribute nearly 10 percent of global GDP. They contributed roughly $6.7 trillion to global GDP in 2015—some $3 trillion more than they would have produced in their origin countries. Developed nations realize more than 90 percent of this effect.

An executive summary of this study can be downloaded here.

We would recommend the reading a UK Government Office for Sciences study and publication.

Stabilisation of the MENA with Governance

Stabilisation of the MENA with Governance or lack of it becoming more and more of a world problem that does not seem to diminish overtime but on the contrary, increase the world leadership worries to the point where nowadays, solutions are gradually pointing to the real source of all the current troubles, e.g. governance.  Everyone however knew sometime back that the trends in demographics, economics, internal security and justice systems and social change would invariably lead towards how much governance, could affect the whole region together with each and every nation.  Today’s situation would illustrate the critical role of governance, social change, and justice systems in dealing with each nation’s specific problems.  Here is a Brookings article on the subject of governance that sadly seem to be the common denominator of all the countries of the MENA.  

MARKAZ

Want to stabilize the Middle East? Start with governance

Tamara Cofman Wittes , Senior Fellow – Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy

tcwittes

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

 

Yesterday, I released a new report on the future of governance in Arab states.

This may seem like an inapt, or even irrelevant, moment to argue for the imperative of improving governance in the Middle East. After all, the region is facing unprecedented turmoil: civil wars that have displaced millions of people and killed more than half a million; vicious extremist movements that massacre civilians, conduct terrorist attacks, and oppress those under its rule; and, of course, the United States and its allies are now invested in a new war in Iraq and Syria fighting ISIS.

I just came back from the Halifax International Security Forum and the only discussion of the Middle East there was framed around terrorism, ISIS, civil war, and refugees. Those are the urgent problems that are seen by many governments around the world as a threat to international security, and that are driving global attention to the region.

But ISIS and civil wars are symptoms of a broader deterioration in the region—they are not the disease. Beginning in 2011, the Middle East endured the breakdown both of states, and of a state system that had lasted for about the prior half-century. That old Middle Eastern state system had advantaged American interests and those of U.S. regional partners, and the United States defended it resolutely. That order is now gone, and the region is in turmoil. The breakdown of that old order is what led to the civil wars in Yemen, Libya, and Syria, and what enabled the rise of ISIS.

We need to understand why and how the Middle East broke down in order to effectively deal with the urgent security challenges that this breakdown generated, and how to return stability to the region. Otherwise, as my colleague General John Allen has noted, the war on terrorism will never be won—instead, we will be fighting ISIS 2.0 and ISIS 3.0 on and on into the future.

In the new report, I argue that the regional breakdown transpired primarily because of failures of governance. The paper analyzes the “how” and “why” of those failures in order to illuminate the future of stable governance in this disordered region, and to suggest policies that the United States and others might pursue to achieve what this paper calls “real security.”

THREE FACTS ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST’S DISORDER:

1) The regional order did not break down primarily because of external invasions, or top-down decisions, but because of forces within states and societies, pressures that built up over many years. I told part of the story of this breakdown in my 2008 book, “Freedom’s Unsteady March“: the story of how the bureaucratic authoritarian model in the Arab world began to weaken—how the clientelism, the ideology, and the coercion on which these states relied to survive became less and less effective in a globalized world.

The Arab states of the last half-century rested on a particular social contract: a patronage system in which citizens gave their consent to the regime, and in exchange the regime provided all kinds of economic and social goods to people.

The Arab states of the last half-century rested on a particular social contract: a patronage system in which citizens gave their consent to the regime, and in exchange the regime provided all kinds of economic and social goods to people: not just security but healthcare, education, social services, and jobs. In Egypt, for many years, the government promised all university graduates a civil service job, which was essentially a lifetime sinecure. An Egyptian friend of mine, who spent many decades working for a state-owned newspaper, described to me that on Fridays he used to come to work with a plastic bag because the newspaper used to give each of the workers in his office a chicken to take home for dinner. That was the corporatist state, the old social contract in action.

Over time, these inefficient patronage systems became especially challenged by the emergence of three major forces: a massive demographic bulge of young people on the cusp of adulthood; the penetration of a globalized economy; and a radically new information environment generated first by satellite television and then by the internet and mobile technology.

As a result of these three forces, states became not just inefficient, but increasingly ineffective, at providing the goods that citizens expected. And so by the early 2000s, those Egyptian university graduates had to wait to get their promised government job for an average of eight years. Young Egyptians spent eight years driving taxis or pushing food carts while waiting for that job to come at last. And when you are young, in a traditional society, and you have no permanent job, you can’t afford to get your own apartment, you can’t get married—in other words, you can’t become a fully adult person—you remain stuck.

2) Previous efforts to reform the social contract often made things worse, not better. It’s crucial to realize that no one, in the run-up to the Arab uprisings of 2011, was unaware of these problems. In the 1990s and 2000s, many in government, the private sector, and civil society, both in the region and in the West, were talking about the need for “reform.” The Europeans had the Barcelona Process, the United States had the Freedom Agenda.

But when Arab governments attempted to adjust the social contract in their nations in order to accommodate the impact of globalization and the rise of youth, they did not develop a more inclusive social contract that could establish a solid and lasting ruling coalition. Instead, they negotiated adjustments with political and economic elites. They made reform commitments to the World Bank and the IMF. They sold off state assets to those with access and wealth. They reduced government hiring without freeing up the private sector for real growth. They brought new business cronies into ruling parties instead of opening up politics to wider participation. The resulting adjustments further empowered select groups while further excluding others, exacerbated inequality, increased state capture by elites, and thus generated more and more widely held grievances against these regimes.

Consequently, discontent and protest increased, and the forces of globalization and technology meant that governments were less able to use patronage and ideology to keep people in line. Left with few effective tools, Arab governments saw increased expressions of dissent and fell back on coercion to suppress them. And this breakdown in the social contract between ruler and ruled, this cycle of dissent and repression, is what produced the Arab uprisings of 2011.

3) Finally, to understand the challenges that the Middle East faces today, we have to understand the consequences of how certain states broke down. When the protests came, many governments responded poorly, in ways that exacerbated societal divisions, and further weakened and in some cases collapsed state institutions. Some governments responded particularly badly, in ways that generated violence, enabled the growth of terrorist movements, and has morphed in at least three countries into outright civil war.

 

Read more on the Brookings original document

Middle East 1 in 20 displaced people from their homes

As highlighted in this WEF latest article written by Emma Luxton, Formative Content, on human displacements in the world, most are from the north-east end of the MENA region.  This is due principally to a certain lack of good governance that is coupled to and / or consequent to the prevailing historically defined under-development of the majority of the nation states of the region.  The title of the WEF quotes 1 in 100 but adds later on in the article that in the Middle East 1 in 20 displaced people from their homes is the current picture. 

One objection, though, could be the huge numbers of expatriate workers displaced from their original homes in south Asia, the Philippines, Nepal, etc. and number up to 90% in some of the GCC countries are also displaced for this time obvious economic reasons.  Would not they count as displaced as well?  Meantime [. . .]

Nearly 1 in 100 people worldwide have been driven away from their homes

Syrian citizens account for one in five of the world’s displaced people.

 

There are more than 65 million people displaced from their homes, a record high since World War II.

This amounts to 0.8% of the global population, or to put it another way, roughly the population of France; or of Canada, Australia and New Zealand combined.

Image: UNHCR

The UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, has been collecting data on displaced people since 1951, and in recent years it has seen numbers increase drastically. In 2015 alone, 5.8 million people were displaced.

Conflict, persecution and human rights violations have driven people from their homes in search of safety. The UNHCR Global Trends report looked at the figures for 2015 and found that 24 people were forced to leave their homes every minute.

Image: Pew Research Center

The UNHCR’s definition of a displaced person includes those who still live in their country of origin (internally displaced people), as well as those who have fled across borders (refugees and asylum seekers).

The Middle East is hosting many of the world’s displaced people, both the internally displaced as well as refugees and asylum seekers.

In fact, as this chart from the Pew Research Center shows, more than one in 20 people in the region are displaced. Many of them have fled the Syrian conflict, which has been a major contributor to the steep rise in people driven away from their homes.

Image: Pew Research Center

Since the war began in 2011, almost 5 million refugees have made their way to another country in search of safety, and 6.6 million are now internally displaced within Syria.

Syrian citizens account for one in five of the world’s displaced people.

Countries with the most internally displaced people include Colombia (6.9 million), Syria (6.6 million) and Iraq (4.7 million).

Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees in relation to the size of its population, with 183 refugees per 1,000 citizens.

Overall, Turkey is providing sanctuary to the largest number of refugees – 2.5 million people took refuge there in 2015.

Pakistan has more than 1.5 million Afghan refugees who have fled the conflict in Afghanistan, and who make up more than half of the displaced population living in the country.

Children are often those most at risk, and the UNHCR estimates that they made up over half of the world’s refugees in 2015.

Many were separated from parents and family, or travelled to a different country alone.

Speaking earlier this year, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon warned: “We are facing the biggest refugee and displacement crisis of our time. Above all, this is not just a crisis of numbers; it is also a crisis of solidarity.”