************************************************************************
The electronic preparation of this document has been done by the
Population Information Network(POPIN) of the United Nations Population
Division in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme
************************************************************************
 AS WRITTEN


                         International Conference
                                  on
                        Population and Development

                              September 1994

                             Cairo, Egypt

            The Global Commission for a Post-Cold War Global System


                          Dr. Kazuo Takahashi

                           Program Director
                      Sasakawa Peace Foundation




                 Great Movements of People


Mr. Chairman, Honorable Ministers, Distinguished Delegates, and my
Friends from the NGO Community;

        It is my great honor to be able to address myself to this
august conference. Time and again the inter-linked issues of
population and development have been discussed for the past two
hundred years, in particular, for this last quarter of the 20th
century. Civilizations have largely been nurtured and destroyed by
the interactions of the population. It is indeed very appropriate
for the representatives of the global community to discuss and
finalize an action plan on these inter-linked questions in such an
ancient, and at the same time, modern city as Cairo.

        Mr. Chairman, the dramatic unfolding of events since mid-
1980s has been bringing about the most fundamental change in the
human community in history. The Sasakawa Peace Foundation
having been established in Tokyo in 1986 for the purpose of
enhancing cooperative approaches to the relations between peoples,
we have been trying our best to serve the mankind by attempting
at and helping out innovative undertakings which are commiserate
to the revolutionary changes that have been taking place in the
world community. One initiative we took ix 91 was to create a
compact and truly global body which consisted of top-level opinion
leaders so that its members can effectively address long-term
issues in the international society in the midst of drastic changes in
the world.

 This group was called the Global Commission for a Post-
Cold War Global System. Its first report was published in March
19921 with a title, Reconstruction of a New t-Global Order - Beyond
Crisis Management This report, after setting out major parameters
of the global community in the next 30 years, identified several
issues which would require in-depth studies. The first among them
that has been picked up by the Global Commission was the closely
related question of this Cairo Conference, namely the great
movements of the people. After two years of work, The Global
Commission adopted a report, titled in February 1994.

Mr. Chairman, the purpose of my statement today is to report to
this Conference major findings and policy recommendations of the
Global Commission for a Post-Cold War Global System on the subject
of the great movements of people.


I. Major Findings

           A starting point of the findings is a widely shared view in the
Commission with regard to the emerging structure of the global
society in which an increasing number of problems would present
themselves to the world community. According to this view, the
world is increasingly divided into two parts. One part consists of a
large part of the Eurasian Continent, the Middle East and Africa.
The other part consists of East Asia, North America and Western
Europe. The first part will be characterized by an increasing
number of turbulence which will mainly take the form of inter-
communal conflicts. The other part will be characterized by
relative stability. It will take time, however, for each political unit
in this zone of relative stability, such as a nation state or a regional
body that belongs to this zone of relative stability to readjust itself
to a rapidly changing situation in the world community. Other
countries which fall in-between the great turbulent zone and the
pockets of relative stability will gradually find themselves in either
of these two zones probably before the end of the century.

1. The first finding is that the size of people who will move around
across national boundaries due mainly to either the pull factors or
the push factors will increase .significantly in the years to come.
While the precise estimates of their number are extremely difficult
to arrive at, they will certainly be hundreds of millions by early
21st in century to the current estimate of about 70 million.

2. The movements of people can have both positive effects and
negative impacts to relevant populations. Orderly encounter
people maximizes the positive impacts, whereas exodus of people
will cause great damages.

3. The major factor which contributed to the great movements of
people in the modern period has been related to the building-up,
management of, and the collapse of the empires. The current
features of the nation states in many parts of the world reflect
these marks clearly.

4. One major factor which motivates people to move across national
boundaries now and in the foreseeable future is the expected
difference in income. With widening gap between the developing
countries and the industrialized world, the migratory forces will be
strengthened, a factor that cannot be altered simply by political

5. Political conflicts and even military battles will increase in the
great turbulent zone Political refugees will increase as a result. At
the same time, economic refugees from these countries will also
increase and be closely associated with social connections along the
ethnic lines.

6. For a receiving country, it should be noted that immigration alone
cannot restore a country's age pyramid that has been significantly
depleted by a birth deficit. The assimilation process of individual
immigrants as well as entire migrant families leads to their
adoption of the age distribution of the host country. It does not
take long for this process to be completed. Thus, the demographic
efficiency of immigration to bolt the process of population aging is
quite limited. The irony is that immigrants are more easily
assimilated in societies that have enough native births than in
countries with low birth rates.

7. The fertility differential is the critical factor for the movements
of people. A high fertility country is always a major sender of
immigrants or migrants to other countries. The fertility differential
between Europe and the southern bank of the Meditteranean is
twice as large as the gap between the United States and Latin
America, or between Japan and the rest of Asia. It is expected that
the movements of people across the Mediterranean, which is
already substantial, will increase significantly in the coming years.
This perception is enhanced with an increasing catalogue of ills in
Africa, including the weakening State organization, chaotic
urbanization, structurally worsening unemployment, malnutrition
and impending famine, desertification and soil erosion ethnic
fragmentation, mass illiteracy, declining per capita income, the
spread of AIDS epidemics among urban elates, selective emigration
of skilled workers, and a regression of foreign aid and investment.

8. Orderly acceptance of immigrants brings about a number of
economic returns to the host country. Benefits spreat throughout
the economy in the form of lower product prices and higher returns
to capital. Immigrants also increase aggregate demand, thus
encouraging investment and fueling an expansion of the market
while keeping some industries in the host country competitive by
increasing returns to capital.

9. However, ready access to immigrants as low wage labor
diminishes the-e incentive for some industries to innovate, further
rationalize the production process, and upgrade jobs. By lowering
the labor costs for the firms that use immigrants over those that do
not, immigration may actually give rise to economic distortion.
Therefore, immigration can become a factor that works against
global restructuring of the industry.

10. Debates about effects of immigration on the labor market of the
host country are reduced to one of substitution versus
complementality. However, it is bays always whether the wage
depression follows or precedes the incorporation of immigrants into
a particular labor market. Therefore, any categorical statement on
this question should be avoided

11. Remittances by immigrants and migrants over the past 25 years
have become a massive redistributive mechanism from rich
countries to poor ones. In fact, even such less organized flows as
those of irregular migrants to the United States from Mexico and
the Caribbean involve annual transfer of between $6 and $8 billion
to the Caribbean - with Mexicans estimated to remit approximately
$4 billion per year.

12. Migrant's most clear contribution is to the survival and,- at
times, the dramatic improvement of the material well-being of the
migrant households.  In most labor sending countries, those macro-
figures of remittances mean a housing boom, a mechanization of the
agricultural sector, a proliferation of small service establishments
and the growth of tourist-related infrastructure. And at the same
time, certain relief of unemployment is also an important
contribution to the social stability in a sending country.

13. The most important negative impact of the immigrants and
migrants on the sending country is the possibility that the
migration process may result in the depletion of already meager
supplies of skilled manpower who also tend to be the most healthy,
dynamic and productive members of the society. At the same time,
most indications suggest that their positive contributions to the
mother countries are exceptions and that emigration has failed to
provide a substantial, discernible and measurable development
impetus to the mother countries.

14. The Fast Asian model is to mainly transfer capital rather than
people between the countries with significant gaps in income and
fertility. It has so far proved effective in enhancing industrial
restructing in East Asia, thus enhancing economic efficiency of the
East Asian economies vis-a-vis others.

15. In a period of increasing immigrations, of sluggish economic
growth, of high unemployment, of deep crisis of the welfare state,
neo-restrictionist vlews prevail in Western Europe and North America.

        Against the background of the above major findings, a
number of policy recommendations can be made. Given the fact
that the world is increasingly divided into two parts as I stated at
the outset, it is essential for u! consider our question from the
viewpoint of creating a new global system to deal effectively with
increasing number of challenges ahead. It is clear that the need for
global co-operative security is growing, and that our frame of mind
has to be adapted to this new situation. Policy-makers must
anticipate international population movements, rather than try and
avoid them, which will continue to grow in magnitude. The
following recommendations of the Global Commission are made with
this Spirit.

1. In order to enhance orderly encounter of peoples, efforts must be
made both in sending countries and in recipient countries. In the
sending countries some major reforms must be attempted at labor
markets. deregulation of labor markets must be a primary
objective in order to enlarge employment opportunities, this
reducing the sizable share of "informal sector workers", who are
major potential migrants. The main objective of labor market
reform is to reduce the excess level of State intervention, thus
reducing the cost of labor and substantially enlarging employment
opportunities.

2. Globally, it is essential to promote
structure.  New investment opportunities industrialized countries
should be looked for in such sectors as the information industry
including telecommunication, new materials, bio-technology related
activities, etc. In developing countries, in addition to sound macro-
economic policies, best efforts should be made to eradicate
corruption and miss-use of resources and also to mitigate inter-
and-intra-communal conflicts. Improvement of economic
performance globally is the most important approach to ensure
orderly encounter of people. Sudden flooding of people on another
people is a situation which will only ensure maximum levels of
negative impacts.

3. To prepare for the return of the migrant workers, sending
countries should encourage their workers abroad to channel part of
their remittances into productive Investments in order to guarantee
a continuous flow of income for the workers once they return home.
It should also try to maintain cultural contacts with its workers
abroad. The labor-receiving country for its part, should avoid
massive and abrupt termination of migrant workers' services as has
happened in the Persian Gulf area. A grace period long enough
should be allowed for the departure of the workers.

4. Domestic policies should aim at controlling the growth rate of
urbanization through a balanced development between
urbanization, industrialization, and agricultural development. While
there are not many successful cases, there are a few. The successful
experiences of town and village enterprises in China, the Japanese
experiences of nationside regional planning and the setting up of
Techno-Polis to assist rural areas and developing regions, the
successful planning of Singapore based on an interesting
combination of free-market economy together with centralized
control of land development may provide some references. A good
combination of allowing market force mechanisms and guided
economic planning is needed.

5. Environment degradation triggers migration flows that are much
larger than those that are needed for ' orderly encounter.
International aid should be allocated with greater awareness of the
links between poverty reduction and environmental goals. Thus it
should focus more on programs with high returns for poverty relief
and environmental health, such as investing in research to reduce
soil erosion and degradation and promoting the development of the
agricultural sector, providing aid to protect natural h-habitat and
biodiversity, and-investing in action-oriented R. & D. on non-carbon
energy alternatives.

6. In many countries, the State has been in control of education,
particularly at the level of primary and junior high schools. It
should become increasingly important for education to become
sufficiently globalized so that the people at the' receiving end of ~&
migrants and refugees can become tolerant of and receptive to the
inflow of foreigners with diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
It is also important for the education systems to be reformed in
such a way as to provide necessary educational opportunities to
migrant workers and refugees.

7. The contribution of the migrant workers of the developing world
to the economies of the developed nations will have to be duely
taken into account. Migrants meet the felt economic and social
needs, and go at the invitation of the developed countries except in
cases of illegal migrants. Their social rehabilitation is therefore a
responsibility of the indurialized nations

8. Given that international migrants will continue to assume larger
proportions in the years to come and since this is an international
issue of considerable human, legal and economic magnitude, the
Global Commission proposes the creation of an international
convention on migrations under the auspices of the International
Labor Organization.

9. At present, it is often impossible even to evaluate the scale of the
displaced persons in various forms. The Global Commission
proposes the creation of an internal monitoring body for
assessing the magnitude and mechanisms of this problem as a
prerequisite to devising an appropriate strategy.

10. While we believe that the Global Commission has made a
considerable progress, we are also aware that a lot more work need
to be pursued. Therefore, the Global Commission proposes the
establishment of a blue ribbon panel of the Secretary General of the
United Nations that will consider the policy approaches to the
increasingly important issue of movements people.

        Mr. Chairman, this is the report of the Global Commission for a
Post-Cold War Global System to you, sir, and through you to the
world community. The actions proposed above will perhaps be
considered as a post-Cairo agenda for the global community. While
highly political in nature, the deliberations at this Conference prove
that the world community has successfully laid the ground for the
consideration of these delicate questions in the coming years. I
thank you for your attention.
