OSCE Warsaw: The Rights of Migrants vs. “Integration”

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2018 Human Dimension Implementation Meeting
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
Tuesday, 18 September 2018

Working Session 12: Rights of Migrants

Intervention read by Christopher Hull, representing Secure Freedom (Center for Security Policy)

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

Below is the prepared text for Mr. Hull’s intervention:

An Intervention before the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
Participating States and Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)

At the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM), Warsaw, Poland
Working Session 12: Rights of Migrants

September 18, 2018

According to OSCE modalities, this part of the Meeting is “devoted to forward-looking discussions with a view to… refining and — if necessary including… to meet new risks and challenges — further developing OSCE commitments.[1]

Secure Freedom believes it is necessary to further develop OSCE commitments with respect to rights of migrants.

Those commitments rightly include, “promotion of the integration of legally resident migrant workers in host societies and the encouragement of their active participation in integration processes.”[2] (Budapest 1994).

But the 1994 Budapest agreement also “underline[d] the right of migrant workers to express freely their ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic characteristics.”[3]

Dreaming up a mythical “right” of migrant workers to express freely their ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic characteristics is the opposite of promoting their integration.

That provision was instead in keeping with the then-widely embraced concept of multiculturalism.

By 2010, pro-migrant[4] German Chancellor Angela Merkel denounced multiculturalism as having “utterly failed.”[5]

By 2011, anti-Brexit[6] British Prime Minister David Cameron had likewise concluded that:

Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We’ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.[7]

Merkel and Cameron’s catastrophic cataclysms since have proven both correct.

The question this raises is why the Italian OSCE Chairmanship decided to focus on the rights of migrants, rather than the Budapest document’s “concern at mass migratory movements… including millions of refugees and displaced persons, due mainly to war, armed conflict, civil strife and grave human rights violations.”[8]

Accordingly, Secure Freedom recommends:

1.   That OSCE participating states revisit commitments to “the right of migrant workers to express freely their ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic characteristics,” to recognize instead multiculturalism’s utter failure and the value of integration and unity or repatriation instead;[9] and
2.   That it is necessary in order to meet new risks and challenges to further develop OSCE commitments with respect to rights of migrants, and thus that the incoming Slovakian Chairmanship, and all those in the agenda-setting process for it, choose to focus on commitments to address “concern at mass migratory movements” (Budapest 1994).[10]
 

Thank you for your attention.

Notes:

1.   Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 395th Plenary Meeting, PC Journal No. 395, Agenda item 4, “DECISION No. 476: MODALITIES FOR OSCE MEETINGS ON HUMAN DIMENSION ISSUES,” 23 May 2002, available at https://www.osce.org/pc/13198?download=true, retrieved September 17, 2018.
2.   See OSCE, “DRAFT ANNOTATED AGENDA FOR THE 2018 HUMAN DIMENSION IMPLEMENTATION MEETING: Warsaw, 10 to 21 September 2018,” available at https://www.osce.org/odihr/393101?download=true, retrieved September 17, 2018.
3.   “CSCE BUDAPEST DOCUMENT 1994 TOWARDS A GENUINE PARTNERSHIP IN A NEW ERA,” Corrected version 21 December 1994, available at https://www.osce.org/mc/39554?download=true, accessed September 17, 2018.
4.   See e.g. “Under pressure for pro-migrant policies, German government pushes deportations,” https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2017/0209/Under-pressure-for-pro-migrant-policies-German-government-pushes-deportations, accessed on September 17, 2018.
5.   Matthew Weaver, “Angela Merkel: German multiculturalism has ‘utterly failed’,” October 17, 2010
6.   See e.g. “British Prime Minister David Cameron Invokes India In Anti-Brexit Debate,” Press Trust of India, June 20, 2016, available at https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/british-prime-minister-david-cameron-invokes-india-in-anti-brexit-debate-1421221, retrieved on September 17, 2018.
7.   “PM’s speech at Munich Security Conference,” February 5, 2011, available at http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130102224134/http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference/; see also “State multiculturalism has failed, says David Cameron,” BBC, February 5, 2011, available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994; both retrieved September 17, 2018.
8.   “CSCE BUDAPEST DOCUMENT 1994 TOWARDS A GENUINE PARTNERSHIP IN A NEW ERA,” Corrected version 21 December 1994, available at https://www.osce.org/mc/39554?download=true, accessed September 17, 2018.
9.   “CSCE BUDAPEST DOCUMENT 1994 TOWARDS A GENUINE PARTNERSHIP IN A NEW ERA,” Corrected version 21 December 1994, available at https://www.osce.org/mc/39554?download=true, accessed September 17, 2018.
10.   “CSCE BUDAPEST DOCUMENT 1994 TOWARDS A GENUINE PARTNERSHIP IN A NEW ERA,” Corrected version 21 December 1994, available at https://www.osce.org/mc/39554?download=true, accessed September 17, 2018.
 

For links to previous articles about the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, see the OSCE Archives.