2.1 Introduction
As with many other international organizations (IOs), the mandate and obligations of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have changed considerably over time. Under its Constitution, IOM’s explicit obligations are to its member states, rather than to migrants themselves; the organization has no formal mandate to protect migrants’ rights. Its institutional features, in particular its dependence on project-based funding, marked deference to governments and involvement in some ‘migration management’ initiatives that sit in tension with human rights standards, raise concerns about IOM’s obligations and accountability. These concerns are heightened as its profile and power in the international system have grown in recent decades.Footnote 1
Integrating legal analysis and insights from international relations (IR) scholarship on the study of IOs, this chapter provides an introduction to the evolution of IOM’s mandate and institutional obligations since its creation in 1951, as a foundation for examining the agency’s accountability – a task taken up in more detail by other contributors to this volume. Much of the scholarly literature on IOM portrays the organization as devoid of normative obligations and available to unquestioningly advance states’ interests in controlling migration, however nefariously.Footnote 2 Many critics charge that ‘IOM is indeed not bound by the human rights frameworks that form the basis of the UN’s work,’ and suggest that the ‘underlying issue’ that drives IOM’s engagement in risky and normatively vexed work such as returning migrants to insecure states is that ‘IOM has no “protection mandate.” Being situated outside the UN system, it is not committed to international human rights law.’Footnote 3 This chapter paints a more complex picture, considering IO mandates and obligations as both a legal and political matter. It charts how IOM’s mandate and conceptions of its obligations – legal and political – have shifted inside and outside the organization.Footnote 4 In particular, it examines these changes in relation to IOM’s identity as a ‘multi-mandated’ organization involved in humanitarian aid, development interventions and migration governance efforts, and its creation over the past two decades of a significant set of internal policies, frameworks and guidelines informing its work. Without minimizing the significant gaps and opacity that remain, the chapter explores changes in the organization’s perceived purpose and obligations over time, expanding ideas about who and what IOM is for. IOM has gradually transformed from a logistics agency strapped to US interests to a global organization serving more diverse member states, with a still nascent but growing sense of its obligations, not only to states but also to people on the move – changes that have ultimately advanced IOM’s efforts to secure its own position and accrue more influence in the international system.Footnote 5 Analyses of IOM and its roles in global governance must grapple with these developments, and critically assess their implications.
The chapter begins by situating this discussion in relation to analyses of IO mandates and obligations more generally. It then examines historical developments in IOM’s formally articulated mandate and obligations, focusing on the Brussels Resolution through which the agency was originally established, and the revamping of its Constitution in 1987.Footnote 6 The chapter then maps out key shifts in conceptions of IOM’s roles and responsibilities, as manifested in its own policies, examining how, as internal rules, these standards strengthen IOM’s formal institutional obligations, particularly vis-à-vis protection.Footnote 7 Last, it draws on the IR literature on IO legitimacy and legitimation to help explain these shifts, and reflects on the implications of this analysis. In developing this account, the chapter draws on archival research and findings from a set of 70 in-depth interviews undertaken between 2015 and 2021 with IOM officials, member state representatives, UN agency staff, human rights advocates, NGO aid workers and independent experts.Footnote 8
2.2 Interpreting IO Mandates and Obligations: Political and Legal Perspectives
Some scholarship on IOM proceeds from the legally incorrect premise that the organization’s mandate and obligations are fully encapsulated in the IOM Constitution, and that to understand its responsibilities and the challenges posed by its role in the global governance of migration, one need look no farther than this rather peculiar document. Legally, however, neither IOs’ mandates nor their obligations are reducible to the parameters of their constituent instruments. As the International Court of Justice (ICJ) recognized in its 1949 Reparations case, an IO’s ‘rights and duties … must depend upon its purposes and functions as specified or implied in its constituent documents and developed in practice.’Footnote 9 Building on this view, the International Law Commission (ILC) defines IO constitutions broadly, as ‘the constituent treaty together with the rules in force in the organization.’Footnote 10 Constitutional developments often do not involve formal revisions to IOs’ founding treaties or other constituent instruments, but instead unfold through IOs’ policies and practices and the ongoing interpretation of their constitutive instruments, particularly through the work of their governing bodies.Footnote 11 As Schermers and Blokker put it, most IOs have ‘a “constitution,” the interpretation of which changes with the development of society.’Footnote 12 As bureaucracies, IOs themselves shape this ongoing process of interpretation, helping to underpin their governance ambitions.Footnote 13
Every IO has a ‘legal order’Footnote 14 – even IOM, notwithstanding its vague Constitution and traditional ‘cowboy’ reputation. An IO’s rules include its ‘constituent instruments, decisions and resolutions adopted in accordance with them, and established practice of the organization.’Footnote 15 If the constitution is ‘the skeleton of the legal order of an international organization, its decisions are its flesh and blood.’Footnote 16 IOs’ constituent treaties typically empower the organization to develop more detailed rules needed for it to work. IOs’ internal rules may address a wide range of issues including governance procedures, the creation of subsidiary organs and delegation of tasks to them, budget, finance and administration, as well as an IO’s operational activities and field of responsibility – issues of particular importance to this discussion.Footnote 17 Understanding IOM’s internal legal order thus requires looking not only at the IOM Constitution, but also at the resolutions of the IOM Council (IOM’s governing body) and decisions of organs such as the Standing Committee on Programmes and Finance, particularly those pertaining to the interpretation of the Constitution and the development and adoption of new policies and frameworks intended to guide its work. It additionally requires examination of important agreements IOM has entered into, such as the 2016 Agreement concerning the Relationship between the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration.Footnote 18 Beyond their constitutions and internal rules, IOs also have obligations under general rules of public international law, which arguably include customary international law.Footnote 19 Although there is considerable debate over the implications of customary international law for IOs, jus cogens norms such as the prohibition of torture and non-refoulement of individuals at risk of torture are ‘utterly binding for all subjects of international law,’ including IOs, a position that is well-established in international jurisprudence.Footnote 20
In interpreting IOM’s mandate and obligations, particularly from a political or operational perspective, its identity as a ‘multi-mandate’ organization is especially significant. ‘Multi-mandate’ is not a legal term of art, yet it is a vital concept in terms of understanding the different roles assigned to IOs, and the tensions that can arise between them.Footnote 21 Different global governance fields are underpinned and legitimized by particular principles and practices, some of which can conflict with one another; this is most obvious when an IO’s work straddles humanitarianism and other sectors such as development. Single-mandate humanitarian organizations such as the World Food Programme focus on providing life-saving aid, whereas multi-mandated agencies such as UNICEF are involved in humanitarian assistance as well as development efforts. Single-mandate humanitarian agencies are often sceptical of close cooperation with national authorities, whereas this is integral to the modus operandi of most development actors.Footnote 22 While humanitarian narratives often present multi-mandated organizations as deviant, such actors are hardly exceptional, with UNICEF again serving as a case in point.Footnote 23 Juggling different elements of organizational mandates is a common concern and a defining challenge for IOM, as its work on migration straddles the humanitarian and development sectors, as well as related fields such as security. It is, however, rarely concertedly analysed as a multi-mandate actor.
2.3 IOM’s Establishment and Constitutional Developments
According to the 1996 ICJ Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinion, IOs’ constituent instruments are, generally speaking, ‘treaties of a particular type; their object is to create new subjects of law endowed with a certain autonomy, to which the parties entrust the task of realizing common goals.’Footnote 24 IOM is often assumed to have little by way of autonomy or obligations, given its vague constitutional mandate, lack of a formal protection role, dependence on project-based funding, and tradition of pronounced deference to its member states. Yet, as an IO with legal personality under its Constitution, IOM, like other IOs, has the ‘capacity to have rights and obligations of its own.’Footnote 25 And, again like other IOs, the formal parameters of its mandate have evolved since the organization was established in 1951 as the Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from Europe (PICMME). This evolution reflects, in part, the agency of the organization and its staff, who have, over the decades, pushed to make the institution permanent and expand its geographic remit and the range of activities it undertakes. Similar processes have unfolded at other IOs, including those working in the field of human mobility.Footnote 26 Recognizing this agency is essential to any serious, politically engaged and empirically grounded conversation about IOM’s obligations and accountability as an IO. If the organization were nothing more than an automaton robotically serving states, then it would be fruitless to critique IOM’s own interpretation of its mandate and obligations, including to migrants themselves. Instead, this conversation could only usefully be had with its member states.
After World War II, millions of people were uprooted across Europe, while scores more were impoverished and unemployed, with little prospect of making a living in their communities. Western governments – particularly the United States – were concerned that these populations would be hotbeds for Communist infiltration, and believed international cooperation was needed to support the resolution of Europe’s displacement and perceived ‘surplus population’ problem, including through migration to states in need of labour. Created in 1946, the International Refugee Organization (IRO) facilitated the resettlement of more than a million refugees from post-war Europe, but by the early 1950s it had come to be seen by its main benefactor, the United States, as costly, inefficient and insufficiently attuned to US foreign policy priorities, and was slated to close.Footnote 27 Although the International Labour Organization (ILO) attempted to take over from the IRO as the main IO working on migration and displacement, their efforts were torpedoed by the United States at the ILO’s 1951 Naples Migration Conference.Footnote 28 (UNHCR had been created in 1950, but as a protection-focused agency without operational capacities.) Washington hastily convened the Brussels Conference of 1951, where PICMME was created with the express purpose of taking over the IRO’s operational activities and assets, including its fleet of ships.
Drafted by the United States, the Brussels Resolution formally established PICMME, setting it outside the framework of the United Nations, and specifying that membership was limited to ‘democratic governments’ with ‘a demonstrated interest in the principle of the free movement of persons.’Footnote 29 These provisions effectively excluded Communist states, and were essential to meeting the demand of the US Congress at the time that any IO working on migration and displacement issues and receiving American financing could not have Communist members – a position that initially impeded UNHCR taking on significant operational roles.Footnote 30 Signed by 16 states, the Brussels Resolution articulated PICMME’s functions, indicating in Article 2 that the organization was
[T]o make arrangements for the transport of migrants, for whom existing facilities are inadequate and who could not otherwise be moved, from certain European countries having surplus population to countries overseas which offer opportunities for orderly immigration, consistent with the policies of the countries concerned.Footnote 31
Article 4 of the Resolution stresses, ‘among the migrants with whom the Committee will be concerned are included … refugees for whom migration arrangements may be made between the Committee and the governments of the countries affording asylum.’Footnote 32 The Committee’s mandate was geographically focused on the movement of people from Europe, and was set to expire within one year. While the fundamental aim was to enable migration that otherwise would not happen by setting up transportation, the signatories did not rule out PICMME’s provision of other, related services, such as language training and settlement support.Footnote 33 Strikingly, although the Brussels Resolution does not explicitly mention protection, its preamble stresses that the aim of intergovernmental cooperation through PICMME is to move migrants ‘to overseas countries where their services can be utilized in conformity with generally accepted international standards of employment and living conditions, with full respect for human rights.’Footnote 34 This acknowledgement of employment and human rights standards did not appear in the Constitution adopted by the organization’s members only a few years later.
The first meeting of the PICMME governing Council occurred immediately on the heels of the Brussels Conference. Efforts immediately began to alter the new organization’s mandate, in particular by extending its operations beyond one year; however, the majority of member states concurred that PICMME needed to demonstrate its utility, efficiency and logistical capacity before any extension could be approved.Footnote 35 PICMME proved its ability to move large numbers of migrants in short order on a limited budget, and its timeline was extended. Meanwhile, the United States led the drafting of a Constitution for the new agency, which changed its name in 1952 to the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM).Footnote 36
ICEM’s first director, Hugh Gibson, consulted with UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld on the draft Constitution, which posed concerns for the UN, given, in Hammarskjöld’s words, ‘the danger of duplication and overlapping arising out of the growth of activities of non-United Nations organizations,’ particularly in relation to ‘the refugee problem.’Footnote 37 Before the Constitution was adopted, and despite clear resistance from ICEM’s own member states, senior ICEM officials met with UN leaders to explore ‘the possibility of more formal relationships between ICEM and the UN,’ and ‘promot[ing] a movement within ICEM to request Specialized Agency status with the United Nations or some special form of relationship, giving ICEM United Nations recognition and standing.’Footnote 38 However, in the assessment of senior UN staff, this would be unlikely and undesirable in light of the ‘difficulty of reconciling the [draft] ICEM constitution with the UN Charter, [and] the political objections that would no doubt arise from certain quarters.’Footnote 39 These ‘political objections’ were a veiled reference to the exclusive character of ICEM membership. Adopted on US insistence, ICEM’s policy of excluding Communist countries reflected the deployment of US refugee and migration policy as a plank in its broader, anti-Communist foreign policy agenda. Whereas the USSR insisted that those who remained displaced in Europe should be repatriated (even involuntarily) and attempted to block emigration from Eastern Europe, western powers favoured resettlement and sidestepped Soviet interference in this process by establishing ICEM outside the UN.
ICEM’s Constitution was adopted on 19 October 1953 and came into force on 30 November 1954, preserving the exclusion of Communist countries and entrenching the committee’s position outside the UN. As articulated in the 1953 ICEM Constitution, the organization’s central objective was
[T]o promote the increase of the volume of migration from Europe by providing, at the request of and in agreement with the Governments concerned, services in the processing, reception and first placement of migrants which other international organizations are not in a position to supply, and such other assistance to this purpose as is in accord with the aims of the Committee.Footnote 40
ICEM and its member states understood the Brussels Resolution to establish and underpin a multi-mandate organization straddling humanitarian and development aspects of migration. Reflecting on the organization’s first twenty years, Director General John Thomas wrote in 1971 that ICEM’s ‘founding fathers had two motivations, the one humanitarian on behalf of refugees, the other economic on behalf of nations, but there was no strict dividing line between the two.’Footnote 41 This framing suggests that even at its founding, IOM was invested in the notion that the rights and interests of states and individuals can be advanced in tandem, glossing over the ways in which these often conflict. Like the Brussels Resolution, the Constitution indicated that the Committee was to work with migrants and refugees, but did not define either group. Over its first decades of work, the ICEM Council extended the organization’s lifespan, the regions in which it worked and the range of activities undertaken, all without formal constitutional modifications.Footnote 42
In the late 1970s, ICEM faced diminished budgets and institutional decline. Its traditional lines of work dried up as emigration from Europe dwindled, and those migrating did not require the assistance of an international organization. Stretching beyond its mandated focus on Europe, ICEM sustained itself through involvement in various humanitarian operations, but its role in these situations was sometimes questioned owing to its rather esoteric formal mandate and its position outside the UN. ICEM’s leadership began to agitate for constitutional changes that could place the organization on stronger footing as it competed for resources and influence. ICEM brought together a group of legal experts to prepare a report entitled ‘Suggestions for amendments to the Constitution of the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration,’ which was circulated to member states in advance of the 39th session of the ICEM Council in 1976.Footnote 43 This report argued that new needs had emerged which differed from those facing the international community when ICEM was created; these ‘new needs were essentially humanitarian and called for services that no other organization could provide, but meeting them often meant relying on the good will of Governments to accept a liberal interpretation of the ICEM Constitution, respecting the spirit rather than the letter of its provisions.’Footnote 44 In line with this report, the ICEM leadership brought to the Council ‘suggestions relating to possible changes in the Constitution,’ which would facilitate bringing new members into the organization; they urged constitutional revisions to describe ‘in detail ICEM’s purposes and functions so that there would no longer be any question about the legal aspects of its intervention when ICEM was called upon to help in emergencies; dropping the word “European” from its name, and generally strengthening the organization.’Footnote 45 Yet ICEM’s member states kyboshed the prospect of renegotiating the Constitution, suggesting that it would be a cumbersome process detracting from more urgent practical matters and the organization’s traditional logistical strengths. In public comments at ICEM Council sessions, they also slapped the Director General’s wrists for initiating the experts’ review without first consulting the member states.Footnote 46
2.3.1 Constitutional Amendments
Having been forcefully rebuffed by the member states, the organization’s leadership let the question of revamping the Constitution rest for several years before relaunching the conversation in the 1980s, in a process that led to the entry into force in 1989 of a new Constitution and a new name: the International Organization for Migration.Footnote 47 Within the organization, this process was seen as a matter of bringing the Constitution into alignment with the roles it had already assumed in practiceFootnote 48 – a view that reflects IOM’s longstanding entrepreneurial, expansionist ethos and a perception of legal standards as malleable rather than fixed.Footnote 49
Perruchoud argues that the ‘ultimate goal’ of the constitutional revisions was ‘undoubtedly to put the Organization in a position to meet the challenges in the field of international migration, and to provide an adequate legal framework within which to respond to contemporary and future trends and needs.’Footnote 50 The adequacy of this framework has, however, been pointedly questioned as it omits direct reference to migrants’ rights, protection, or humanitarian principles.Footnote 51 The revised Constitution retains the notion that members should have ‘demonstrated interest in the principle’ if not the practice ‘of free movement of persons’ and keeps states firmly at the centre of migration decision-making, indicating that the ‘Organization shall recognize the fact that control of standards of admission and the number of immigrants to be admitted are matters within the domestic jurisdiction of States, and, in carrying out its functions, shall conform to the laws, regulations and policies of the States concerned.’Footnote 52
Indeed, IOM’s fundamental obligations under its Constitution are to its member states, with Article 1.1 laying out the organization’s mandate. It provides that:
The purposes and functions of the Organization shall be:
(a) to make arrangements for the organized transfer of migrants, for whom existing facilities are inadequate or who would not otherwise be able to move without special assistance, to countries offering opportunities for orderly migration;
(b) to concern itself with the organized transfer of refugees, displaced persons and other individuals in need of international migration services for whom arrangements may be made between the Organization and the States concerned, including those States undertaking to receive them;
(c) to provide, at the request of and in agreement with the States concerned, migration services such as recruitment, selection, processing, language training, orientation activities, medical examination, placement, activities facilitating reception and integration, advisory services on migration questions, and other assistance as is in accord with the aims of the Organization;
(d) to provide similar services as requested by States, or in cooperation with other interested international organizations, for voluntary return migration, including voluntary repatriation;
(e) to provide a forum to States as well as international and other organizations for the exchange of views and experiences, and the promotion of cooperation and coordination of efforts on international migration issues, including studies on such issues in order to develop practical solutions.Footnote 53
Thus articulated, IOM’s mandate is in some ways highly specific yet also remarkably vague. IOM sees its Constitution as ‘permissive’: that is, it identifies some of the activities it may undertake and points to or implies some of the sectors in which the organization may work, but the list is not exhaustive. Similarly, the Constitution identifies (but does not define) some of the groups with whom IOM may work, such as refugees and displaced persons, but IOM is not limited to interacting only with these groups.Footnote 54 While the ICEM Constitution mandated the organization to actively promote migration, the 1989 Constitution removes migration promotion from IOM’s formal remit.Footnote 55 IOM has taken significant latitude in interpreting its Constitution, suggesting, for example, that the provisions of Article 1 bestow on IOM a humanitarian mandate – an interpretation accepted by its member states in several IOM Council resolutions.Footnote 56 It has also suggested that the Constitution sows the seeds for IOM involvement in the protection of migrants. This is a more controversial interpretation but one that, Chetail argues, is in line with the doctrine of implied powers, which suggests that every IO ‘possesses implied powers that are additional to those explicitly granted by its constituent instrument and essential to fulfilling the purposes and functions of the organization.’Footnote 57 On this view, IOM is mandated to assist migrants, and assistance worthy of the name must involve protection.Footnote 58 Yet even if this interpretation is accepted, in fundamental ways the IOM Constitution remains a throwback:
The loosely defined terms of its mandate has created a hiatus, if not a gulf, between what IOM can do and what it must do … The deafening silence of the IOM Constitution about the protection of migrants and their human rights is, indeed, astonishing. It is a historical anomaly that is no longer compatible with the profound transformation of IOM, its new responsibilities as a UN-related organization and, more broadly, the renewed commitment towards the human rights of migrants as acknowledged in the Global Compact for Migration.Footnote 59
The doctrine of implied powers establishes that IOM can appropriately involve itself in migrant-protection efforts. However, the doctrine of implied powers arguably cannot, on its own, undergird a binding obligation for IOM to undertake positive actions to protect migrants’ rights, although it is obligated not to actively violate migrants’ rights.Footnote 60 Furthermore, it does not speak to the challenge of managing the different elements of IOM’s mandate.
As interpreted by the IOM bureaucracy and the organization’s member states, the Constitution establishes an overarching ‘migration mandate’ straddling multiple normative and operational spheres. Reflecting on the revamping of the IOM Constitution in the 1980s, Perruchoud suggests that
In the past, there was sometimes a tendency to label ICM as a humanitarian body, because of its involvement in the migration of refugees and displaced persons; or as a development agency, because of its programmes for the transfer of qualified human resources. This apparent contradiction was potentially detrimental, as it veiled the common denominator of all its activities, namely, the migration of people.Footnote 61
Perruchoud argues that ‘[u]pdating the Constitution has helped to eliminate this dichotomy.’Footnote 62 However, many inside and outside IOM continue to perceive it as two agencies in one, a divided house that struggles to reconcile the implications of its multiple mandates. Although the 1989 Constitution provides little explicit direction to navigate this challenge, IOM has in recent years significantly expanded its set of internal rules, many of which attempt, with varying degrees of success, to speak to this issue.
2.4 IOM’s Internal Policies: Shifting Conceptions of the Organization’s Purpose and Obligations
Recognizing that constitutive instruments do not tell the full story of how IOs’ responsibilities evolve and are understood in practice, this section maps out some key shifts in conceptions of IOM’s mandate and obligations that go beyond the formal ascriptions of its Constitution, focusing on the flurry of internal policies, frameworks, and guidelines that it has developed over the past 20 years (see Table 2.1). IOM’s internal policymaking moves are somewhat surprising as the organization has a reputation for shirking normative standards.Footnote 63 IOM officials have historically been reluctant to, in their view, bog the agency down with standards and protocols that could compromise operational efficiency and responsiveness.Footnote 64 These developments are also surprising because some IOM officials have, in recent memory, publicly rejected the notion that the organization has obligations under international human rights law – standards that are recognized and incorporated into many of IOM’s recent internal policies. For example, as Goodwin-Gill points out, IOM representatives argued this point before the UK House of Lords EU Committee in 2004.Footnote 65 After introducing IOM’s internal policymaking efforts, this section considers their significance from the perspective of international law and IR theories on the legitimation of IOs.
Table 2.1 IOM Internal Policies, Frameworks and Guidelines (selected), 1998–2021
Document name | Year |
|---|---|
Evaluation Guidelines | 1998 |
Human Resources Policy in IOM (MC/INF/242) | 2000 |
IOM Migration Policy Framework for Sub-Saharan Africa (MC/INF/244) | 2000 |
Internally Displaced Persons: IOM Policy and Activities (MC/INF/258) | 2002 |
IOM Policy on the Human Rights of Migrants (MC/INF/259) | 2002 |
IOM Evaluation Guidelines | 2006 |
IOM Data Protection Principles | 2009 |
The Human Rights of Migrants – IOM Policy and Activities (MC/INF/298) | 2009 |
IOM Data Protection Guidelines | 2010 |
Migration Crisis Operational Framework (MC/2355) | 2012 |
Internal Guidance Note on Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration for Trafficked Migrants (IN/198) | 2012 |
Internal Guidance Note on Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration for Migrants in Detention (IN/199) | 2012 |
Internal Guidance Note on IOM-Assisted Voluntary Returns and Reintegration of Unaccompanied Migrant Children (IN/208) | 2013 |
IOM Standards of Conduct (IN/15 Rev. 1) | 2014 |
Assessing Risks when Assisting Victims of Trafficking (IN/219) | 2014 |
IOM Policy on Protection (IOM Policy on Protection) | 2015 |
IOM’s Humanitarian Policy: Principles for Humanitarian Action (C/106/CRP/20) | 2015 |
Gender Equality Policy 2015–2019 (C/106/INF/8/Rev.1) | 2015 |
Migration Governance Framework (C/106/40) | 2015 |
IOM Internal Guidance Note on Immigration Detention and Alternatives to Detention (IN/228) | 2015 |
Internal Guidance Note on Mixed Migration Flows (IN/227) | 2015 |
Framework on the Progressive Resolution of Displacement Situations | 2016 |
IOM General Procurement Principles and Processes | 2016 |
Guidance Note on How to Mainstream Protection Across IOM Crisis Response (IN/232) | 2016 |
Policy and Procedures for Preventing and Responding to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (IN/234) | 2016 |
Guidance Note on the Inclusion of Protection Considerations when Planning and Implementing International Humanitarian Evacuations for Migrants Caught in Armed Conflict Settings (IN/238) | 2016 |
IOM Framework for Addressing Internal Displacement | 2017 |
IOM Key Principles for Internal Humanitarian Evacuations/Relocations of Civilian Populations in Armed Conflict | 2018 |
IOM Staff Regulations (C/108/INF/2) (updated) | 2018 |
Institutional Framework for Addressing Gender-Based Violence in Crises | 2018 |
Guidance for Addressing Gender in Evaluations | 2018 |
IOM Evaluation Policy (IN/266) | 2018 |
IOM Monitoring Policy (IN/31 Rev. 1) | 2018 |
IOM Competency Framework | 2018 |
IOM Internal Governance Framework | 2018 |
Risk Management Framework (updated) | 2019 |
Reporting and Investigation of Misconduct Framework (IN/275) | 2019 |
Accountability to Affected Populations Framework | 2020 |
IOM Policy on the Full Spectrum of Return, Readmission and Reintegration | 2021 |
IOM Monitoring and Evaluation Guidelines | 2021 |
*Note: This table focuses on policies, frameworks and guidelines produced at the headquarters level. It includes internal guidance notes produced for IOM staff (often containing mandatory compliance instructions), as well as policies, frameworks and guidelines produced internally and presented to the IOM Council and/or the IOM Standing Committee on Programmes and Finance. It does not include time-limited strategic planning frameworks.
IOM’s body of internal policies (including guidelines and frameworks) has ballooned in recent decades, and particularly over the last ten years. Since 1998, at the headquarters level, IOM has developed at least 40 significant, publicly available institutional policies, with 31 of these adopted since 2012 (see Table 2.1). Recent IOM policies, frameworks and guidelines address a wide range of issues including migration governance, humanitarian action, migration crises, AVR, data, monitoring and evaluations, protection, accountability, prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse, and particular populations such as trafficked migrants, evacuees, IDPs and migrant workers.Footnote 66 In addition, IOM has adopted policies focused on management and human resources issues such as staff conduct and competencies, gender equity, risk management, and reporting and investigation of misconduct. Beyond these internal policies, which are to be implemented on an ongoing basis, IOM has additionally developed time-bound strategic planning frameworks, such as the IOM Strategic Vision: 2019–2023: Setting a Course for IOM, building on the 2007 IOM Strategy.Footnote 67 Discussed and in some cases formally approved by the IOM Council, these strategic frameworks are also important elements of IOM’s increasingly extensive internal policy apparatus.
Many of IOM’s early internal policies acknowledge international human rights law and humanitarian principles, but do not necessarily clearly commit the organization to abide by them. For example, the 2002 IOM Policy on the Human Rights of Migrants indicates that ‘In all aspects of its work, IOM is committed to working towards effective respect for the human dignity and well-being of migrants.’Footnote 68 While the scope of the notion of ‘working towards effective respect’ is unclear, later in the policy IOM more forthrightly ‘recognizes its responsibility to ensure that when providing assistance to migrants, its activities must obtain full respect for the rights of the individual, its activities must be non-discriminatory and must not diminish the human rights of others.’Footnote 69 While the language used in some of IOM’s more recent internal policies is still ambiguous, it is more direct in others. The most important of IOM’s recent, member state-approved internal policies include the 2012 Migration Crisis Operational Framework (MCOF) and the 2015 Migration Government Framework (MiGOF). The MiGOF lays out ‘the essential elements for facilitating orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration.’Footnote 70 ‘Adherence to international standards and fulfilment of migrants’ rights’ is the first of the MiGOF’s three foundational principles.Footnote 71 The MCOF’s goal is to identify the links between IOM’s different interventions in emergency settings, such as camp coordination and camp management, the provision of emergency aid and shelter, evacuations and border management.Footnote 72 Considerably more explicit than the MiGOF, the MCOF states that IOM is ‘bound and committed to the existing legal and institutional frameworks contributing to the effective delivery of assistance and protection and ultimately to the respect and promotion of human rights and humanitarian principles.’Footnote 73 Through IOM Council resolutions, IOM’s member states unanimously welcomed both the MCOF and the MiGOF, and requested the Director General to apply these frameworks and report regularly to the Council on this process.Footnote 74 These documents have become cornerstones of IOM’s subsequent internal policymaking activities, informing the creation of additional standards focused on more specific operational challenges and populations.
Alongside these policies, IOM has produced an extensive series of handbooks, guides, manuals and toolkits, many of which incorporate and address the implementation of these internal policies as well as relevant external standards.Footnote 75 In addition to these handbooks and manuals, briefs such as the IOM Protection Portfolio – Crisis Response map out IOM’s internal policies as well as relevant standards developed by the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee on topics such as protection mainstreaming; ‘meeting institutional commitments on human rights’; prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse; counter-trafficking efforts in emergencies; humanitarian evacuations; relocations; resettlement; land, property and reparations; and mental health and psychosocial support.Footnote 76
The breadth of IOM’s internal policymaking efforts reflects IOM’s identity as a multi-mandate agency. The fact that many of the policies address populations and operational challenges associated with IOM’s work in emergency settings reflects the significance of involvement in the humanitarian sector to IOM’s budget and field presence, and the general expectation that professionalized organizations active in humanitarian response should be guided by clear, shared principles and standards.Footnote 77 That said, these policies are certainly not all equally clear or robust, and they do not enjoy equal weight (or even awareness) across the organization. While some of IOM’s internal policies, such as the 2015 Humanitarian Policy, were developed through multi-year processes involving internal and external consultations, others were drafted by consultants with seemingly little institutional engagement or investment in dissemination, implementation and review of the policy.Footnote 78
In addition to these policies related to particular populations and fields of responsibility, it is important to note that significant changes were also recently made to IOM’s internal financing rules. Under Director General Swing, the member states agreed to an increase in the rate of overhead charged on IOM projects. This is significant because, in the absence of robust core funding, IOM relies on funds raised through overheads to undertake otherwise unfunded activities such as internal policy development efforts and related training initiatives, as well as the hiring of protection officers involved in efforts to implement some of these internal standards.Footnote 79
2.4.1 Assessing the Significance of IOM’s Internal Policies: Legal Perspectives
What, legally, is the significance of these policies? Arguably, at least some of these policies represent internal rules, which may have binding effects on IOM alongside its Constitution and other key standards such as the 2016 Agreement concerning the Relationship between the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration. An IO’s internal law is ‘the body of rules governing the functioning of the organization, in the widest sense of the term.’Footnote 80 As discussed above, internal rules stem from an IO’s constituent treaty, as well as from resolutions passed by an IO’s organs and institutional practices, provided these are ‘sufficiently clear and well-established.’Footnote 81 Internal rules can in theory bind an IO, although there is little agreement on the form that internal rules must take, with some suggesting that ‘Any decision by a competent organ creates binding internal rules, provided that the intention to do so is sufficiently clear.’Footnote 82
Per its Constitution, IOM has two organs, the Council and the Administration;Footnote 83 both have constitutionally established roles in the creation of internal rules for IOM. Under the Constitution, the Council’s role is inter alia ‘to determine, examine and review the policies, programmes and activities of the Organization.’Footnote 84 As the head of the IOM Administration, the Director General is to ‘discharge the administrative and executive functions of the Organization in accordance with this Constitution and the policies and decisions of the Council and the rules and regulations established by it. The Director General shall formulate proposals for appropriate action by the Council.’Footnote 85 While the Director General can therefore bring proposals for internal rules forward to the Council for formal approval, he or she may arguably also create internal rules by clearly and explicitly shaping the practice of the organization. Many of the policies listed in Table 2.1 have been presented to and approved by the IOM Council itself or the Council’s Standing Committee on Programmes and Finance; others have not gone through a formal process of member state approval but have been disseminated within the organization, with some requiring mandatory staff compliance.
While the debate in international law on what constitutes an ‘internal rule’ is unsettled, at least some of IOM’s recently adopted policies, particularly those approved by the IOM Council, plausibly rise to the level of internal rules. As a formal legal agreement with another IO, the 2016 Agreement is not an internal rule for IOM, but it is a critical part of the organization’s evolving legal order, and its internal policies should be considered and interpreted in light of this important agreement. The text identifies IOM as ‘an essential contributor […] in the protection of migrants,’ and states that IOM ‘undertakes to conduct its activities in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the Charter of the United Nations and with due regard to the policies of the United Nations furthering those Purposes and Principles and to other relevant instruments in the international migration, refugee and human rights fields.’Footnote 86 On the face of it, these provisions complement the recognition in many of IOM’s recent internal policies that the organization has obligations to respect migrants’ rights and support their protection. However, the Agreement also identifies IOM as a ‘non-normative’ organization – a term that is not part of the standard lexicon of international law, but which has understandably generated concern that this may be a way for IOM to evade its obligations and prioritize states’ interests over migrants’ rights. Senior IOM staff and other officials involved in the negotiation of the 2016 Agreement suggest that in this context, ‘non-normative’ carries a particular meaning: that IOM would not serve as an arena to set, monitor and hold states legally accountable to binding international standards related to migration.Footnote 87 The term was deployed on the insistence of IOM member states, and assuaged states’ concern that upon entering the UN system IOM might retreat from its longstanding, deferential posture, particularly in relation to respect for sovereign control over admissions and membership. However, IOM leaders also mused that the non-normative term reflected the idea that states ‘don’t want us to be shackled, I think, by norms or standards.’Footnote 88 The perception that adherence to international norms might hinder or even shackle the organization, rather than guide it towards appropriate action, is telling, and points to the need for caution in assuming that the obligations confirmed in the 2016 Agreement and in various internal policies are internalized and warmly welcomed across the organization.
Looking beyond debates on the precise contours of IOM’s evolving legal order and which policies might represent internal rules, Klabbers stresses that the structure of international law on the responsibility of IOs is such that it is difficult, if not impossible, to use these standards to leverage formal legal accountability, such as through courts or tribunals.Footnote 89 Others are more optimistic, suggesting that notwithstanding the hurdles to using these standards to uphold accountability, they have significant implications for the interpretation of IOM’s mandate and obligations, particularly vis-à-vis protection. In an expansive reading of the IOM Constitution and the duties stemming from IOM Council resolutions, institutional policies and practices, Chetail draws on the International Law Commission (ILC) Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations (ARIO) to argue that ‘protecting migrants is both implicit and explicit to the mandate of IOM. It is inherent to the purposes and functions of this organization under its Constitution and, more importantly, it is an explicit duty deriving from the subsequent practice and interpretation of the IOM governing body.’Footnote 90 Chetail further contends:
The common complaint among scholars about the limits of its Constitution is not only ineffective but also misleading, as it fails to capture the potential of international law in addressing the responsibility of IOM towards migrants … IOM is legally bound to protect migrants’ rights under the current state of international law and, therefore, even without any change in its constituent instrument. The obligation of IOM stems from a threefold legal basis: the internal law of the organization, as informed by the practice of its governing body; the international agreement concluded in 2016 with the UN; and the general rules of international law, including jus cogens norms. This insight from the law of international organization may provide, in turn, a new critical step for both scholars and activists to move from a posture of IOM-bashing to a more incisive and efficient engagement with a view to ensuring its accountability on the basis of existing legal commitments.Footnote 91
As I have discussed, many of IOM’s internal policies, including some approved by the IOM Council, recognize and commit the organization to respect and advance human rights and humanitarian standards. However, they also often hedge these commitments, reflecting continued deference to states and ‘pliability’ in assisting them.Footnote 92 Chetail’s approach is striking because rather than focusing on how this tendency limits the effectiveness of IOM’s policies and their implications for its mandate, he takes seriously the commitments IOM and its member states have made. Instead of taking the protection-related shortcomings of IOM’s legal order as evidence of a hopelessly compromised mandate, he uses IOM’s commitments as the foundation for a capacious reading of its obligations. This reading reflects the aspirations of the architects of some of IOM’s internal policies, who have sought to gradually shift how IOM’s mandate and obligations are interpreted, and to strengthen the organization’s position, performance and perceived legitimacy by tying it to international human rights and humanitarian standards – a strategy that underscores the ways in which ‘mandates’ are both legal and political concepts.
2.4.2 Legitimation through Internal Policymaking: Perspectives from IR Theory
IOM’s internal policy development activities represent something of a puzzle: IOM has been presumed to thrive precisely because it lacks explicitly articulated obligations to human rights and humanitarian norms. Why then would it commit to these standards through numerous internal policies – at least some of which represent binding internal rules? These commitments are difficult if not impossible to enforce, and are expressed in weaker terms than some protection advocates would like. Taken alongside IOM’s entry into the UN system, these policies may ‘blue wash’ some activities that are incongruous with respect for human rights.Footnote 93 Yet these limitations do not solve the puzzle. It is implausible to suggest that these developments are nothing more than an elaborate smokescreen for states’ migration-control agendas – not least because many governments score political points by flaunting their anti-migrant positions, and need no help from IOM in this. Taken as a whole, these policies shift expectations inside and outside IOM regarding the organization’s commitments, and increase prospects that IOM may be held to account – politically, if not in a formal legal sense – in relation to these commitments.Footnote 94 A more nuanced explanation is therefore needed, one that does not assume that these policymaking efforts are simply altruistic but that considers the incentives and pressures facing IOM as an IO. In this section, I sketch the contours of such an explanation, drawing on insights from IR scholarship on IOs’ legitimation efforts.Footnote 95
Although rarely applied to IOM,Footnote 96 an extensive body of IR research theorizes the sociological legitimacy of IOs – that is, their ‘perceived compliance with norms and values’ that underpin their claimed authority and exercise of power.Footnote 97 Otherwise put, legitimacy entails a ‘generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions.’Footnote 98 This literature conceives of legitimacy as a dynamic and contested but essential ‘operational resource’ for all IOs as they attempt to achieve their governance aims.Footnote 99 If ‘legitimacy is the goal’ for an IO, ‘legitimation is the way to get there.’Footnote 100 IOs deploy legitimation strategies to demonstrate their compliance with legitimizing norms to important target audiences such as states and other IOs. In addition to trying to foster a sense of legitimacy in the eyes of external actors, an IO may also engage in self-legitimation efforts ‘as a way of developing, defining and (re)confirming its identity,’ recognizing that internal legitimacy is often vital to effective external claims to legitimacy.Footnote 101 Legitimation strategies may be multi-pronged, responding to the priorities and interests of different stakeholders inside and outside the organization. They often involve the strategic use of discourses and narratives that support an IO’s claimed role, and institutional reforms including internal policymaking efforts – in other words, a playbook closely followed by IOM in recent years.Footnote 102 Legitimation strategies are especially important for multi-mandate IOs such as IOM whose work may result in contradictions, with one ‘side’ of the organization behaving in ways that corrode the perceived legitimacy of its other sides. In the case of IOM, these contradictions play out in, for example, conflicts between the Department of Operations and Emergencies (DOE), responsible for IOM’s humanitarian response work, and the Department of Migration Management (DMM), which runs IOM’s more normatively fraught AVR and border management projects.Footnote 103 In such cases, legitimation strategies attempt to rationalize an organization’s behaviour, enabling IO staff to feel that their work is appropriate and withstands scrutiny.Footnote 104 Through their ongoing legitimation efforts, IOs strive to advance their governance objectives, build up their own power, defend against competition, secure increased material resources, and adapt to changing normative expectations.Footnote 105
Viewed as institutional legitimation efforts, the institutional logic motivating IOM’s internal policy development efforts (and its attempts to reinterpret its mandate to include humanitarian work and human rights protection) becomes clearer. The IOM Constitution does not explicitly reference legitimizing values such as humanitarian principles or human rights, but it girds the organization’s work in a norm that is, according to states and orthodox (although increasingly challenged) readings of international law, integral to legitimate migration governance efforts: sovereign control of entry and membership. While adherence to this principle remains essential to IOM’s legitimacy in the eyes of its members, the organization has had to adjust to the rise of human rights as the predominant legitimizing framework in global governance, especially in relation to fields such as humanitarian response, where IOM is highly active.Footnote 106 This has fuelled the need for new legitimation strategies – including internal policy development efforts – that try to fuse protection commitments, human rights and humanitarian principles with deference to member states. This attempt to meld deferential service to states with commitments to human rights and humanitarian principles prompts some sceptics to question IOM’s ‘protection DNA’ – yet this deferential position, and IOM’s continued, full-throated recognition of states’ rights to control entry and membership, is a source of perceived legitimacy from the perspective of many of its member states. That IOM is perceived as legitimate by some actors and illegitimate by others does not undermine the suggestion that these policies are part of IOM’s efforts to legitimate itself, and that IOM may in fact be gaining legitimacy through such efforts. As Zaum emphasizes, ‘legitimacy judgements are not universal.’Footnote 107 Particularly for multi-mandate organizations, there may be divergent views on how particular norms should be interpreted, what is required for an IO to be legitimate in relation to these norms, and how tensions between different normative frameworks should be managed. IR scholarship on IOs’ legitimation efforts stresses that these initiatives are most likely to be effective when they balance different constituencies’ concernsFootnote 108 – an approach that has been the hallmark of IOM’s attempts to shore up its legitimacy.
Beyond needing to respond to the emergence of human rights as the overarching, legitimizing framework for global governance, IOM’s deployment of legitimation strategies, such as its internal policymaking efforts, has been motivated by changes in the composition of the IOM membership, and the need to achieve a greater degree of organizational coherence. As one senior IOM official expressed it, ‘If you’re a collection of 3,000 projects, of course it’s difficult to bring a sense of coherence to what the organization does and represents, particularly as perceptions are … widely differing, let’s say, amongst our partners.’Footnote 109 The expansion of IOM’s membership base to include more large, Southern migrant-sending states has fuelled the agency’s need to recalibrate to portray its commitments as encompassing the protection of migrants’ rights, as this is a clear expectation of many of these newer members.Footnote 110 Notably, senior staff involved in the agency’s internal policymaking processes distinguish between IOM recognizing that it is a protection actor with protection obligations, and any attempt to recast itself as having a formal, legal protection mandate. Some suggest that ‘We’re very clear about the fact that we’re talking about operational, effective protection’ rather than legal protection efforts; ‘The fact that IOM is not legally mandated does not mean that IOM does not consider itself bound by international norms and international law.’Footnote 111 Possessing such policies is also, increasingly, an expectation of the donor agencies of IOM’s wealthier Western member states; for the agency to secure larger amounts of funding from these donors, a less ad hoc, more systematized approach was seen to be necessary.Footnote 112 While the desire to bring in more money is thus part of the explanation for the creation of these policies, this is part and parcel of IOM’s broader legitimation strategies. Donors are one of the key audiences for IOM’s legitimation efforts. IOM’s major humanitarian funders, in particular, expect recipients to have relatively clear institutional commitments to the legitimizing principles of the sector – an expectation that is addressed at least in part through IOM’s internal policymaking.
While the instigation of these policy development efforts preceded the focused negotiations around IOM’s entry into the UN system as a related organization (which began in earnest in 2015), other IOs, particularly in the UN system, were also an important audience for IOM’s legitimation efforts. Although IOM’s internal policymaking processes were not primarily attempts to pave IOM’s way into the UN system, they did enable IOM to cast itself as a more reliable counterpart to its UN partners. Protection advocates within IOM suggest that the agency’s entry into the UN system may, in turn, help create pressure for accountability vis-à-vis IOM’s protection obligations: ‘Not externally, but maybe internally … there’s this sense that it’s an argument we can use, right? So for the people within the organization that think that we should be doing better, we have an ability now to say, look, we’re part of the system now, you know, and we have these obligations.’Footnote 113 In this sense, IOM’s entry into the UN system may strengthen the hand of protection proponents within IOM – a constituency that has not traditionally had a strong base of power with the organization.
Internal proponents of IOM’s policy development efforts, particularly those related to protection and humanitarianism, argue that these steps were necessary to better serve migrants, and also to achieve greater coherence across the organization, which is in turn essential to bolstering its perceived credibility and continued expansion. These considerations are especially important for IOM as it has become increasingly visible since becoming a related organization in the UN system. Reflecting on IOM’s efforts to manage different elements of its mandate, one senior IOM staff member suggested,
the multiplicity of counterparts and accountability lines that we have naturally leads to tensions, well at least challenges, in how you reconcile those different programming areas to ensure that they remain consistent and coherent. But I think over the past decade, the organization has also equipped itself with fairly robust sets of principles and policy frameworks that, even though they may refer to one particular area of work, they’re applied to the entire organization.Footnote 114
As another senior IOM official put it, ‘Learning how to play those hats’ – that is, how to manage the different elements of IOM’s mandate – is a reflection of ‘the political maturity of an organization. We are growing up but we are not there yet.’Footnote 115 IOM’s internal policies help to manage and navigate tensions between the ‘different sides’ of IOM, which some staff still describe as a ‘schizophrenic’ organization in light of conflicts between departments concerned with humanitarian response and those focused on other aspects of migration management, such as AVR.Footnote 116 A growing number of the agency’s staff have worked with protection-oriented NGOs or UN agencies before joining IOM, and question IOM’s traditional, ‘cowboy’ approach.Footnote 117 For these staff, commitments to human rights and humanitarian principles in IOM’s internal policies assure them that they share common values with their organization, allowing them to ‘look in the mirror and like what they see’ – a key consequence of self-legitimation efforts.Footnote 118
Legitimation is an ongoing process of contestation, not a ‘one and done’ box-ticking effort. It is thus unsurprising that IOM continues to refine and roll out new policies, and revise its practices in light of evolving demands. IOM still has vocal critics, including partners within the UN system who charge that IOM is still fundamentally motivated by a ‘sell, sell, sell’ mentality.Footnote 119 However, many UN officials, human rights advocates, and member state officials concerned with IOM’s adherence to human rights standards applaud the changes underway within the organization, emphasizing that IOM has come a long way since the ‘bad old days’Footnote 120 of the agency presenting itself as a maximally flexible, unscrupulous contractor willing to ‘do anything for money.’Footnote 121 Concerningly, however, IOM’s legitimation efforts, particularly its adoption of human rights discourses and commitments, may have the effect of making some normatively contentious ‘migration management’ activities seem more acceptable and in line with human rights standards. This possibility requires careful monitoring, to ensure that IOM is held to account in practice for the commitments it has made.Footnote 122 The preceding discussion and the broader IR literature on IO legitimation focus on sociological legitimacy as an empirical issue – that is, on whether and how IOs come to be accepted as legitimate by key actors. However, this concern points to the need for future analyses of IOs’ sociological legitimacy to link to investigations of their legal and moral legitimacy.
2.5 Conclusion: Who and What Is IOM For? Updating Assumptions and Expectations
Conceptions of IOM’s mandate and obligations have evolved considerably inside and outside the organization since its creation in 1951. Motivated significantly by a thirst for increased legitimacy, and in turn, influence in global governance, IOM’s internal policymaking efforts – alongside broader debates on its mandate – have played an important but to-date under-examined role in shifting ideas of what IOM is for, and whom it should serve. IOM remains a service provider shaped by its projectized funding structure, a set-up that was reinforced in the terms of the 2016 Agreement. However, the internal policies described above provide more direction on what kinds of services the organization should and should not provide, and the principles that are to inform this work. Viewed from a migrants’ rights protection standpoint, these policies are far from perfect. Yet they are a critical part of IOM’s effort to recast and legitimate itself as having a clear humanitarian mandate as well as broader institutional protection obligations. This reinterpretation brings to the fore tensions between the traditional idea that IOM is first and foremost ‘for’ its member states, and the notion that it should also be ‘for’ migrants themselves. The organization has long claimed to serve states and individuals alike, with the introduction to the 1971 volume commemorating the organization’s 20th anniversary asserting that its ‘sole aim’ is to ‘serve men and nations.’Footnote 123 Yet such claims are now a much more routine part of IOM’s self-presentation, an interpretation increasingly accepted by its member states despite the conflicts and tensions it entails. In light of these developments, some IOM staff suggest that the organization now uses these internal policies to say ‘no,’ more often than it has in the past, to requests from states to take on normatively troubling work, while recognizing that it still has a way to go in this respect.Footnote 124
There are ample opportunities to build on these developments to strengthen the extent to which IOM lives up to its claims to serve not only states but also migrants. First, the IOM leadership and the organization’s member states should further clarify the content and scope of the agency’s protection obligations, including through reforms to the IOM Constitution. Member states concerned with respect for human rights and humanitarian values should spearhead a move through the IOM Council to more formally recognize IOM’s humanitarian mandate and specify its human rights protection obligations. This should include amendments to the IOM Constitution to clearly bind the organization to respect and promote the rights of people on the move internally and across borders. These developments should strengthen IOM’s capacity to say ‘no’ to projects inconsistent with human rights and humanitarian standards. IOM works in many morally, legally and politically vexing contexts characterized by serious, sometimes intractable dilemmas. Such reforms would not do away with these dilemmas, but should provide IOM with stronger scaffolding to reflect on and determine when it should decline involvement in or withdraw from particular, normatively compromised operations. Such high-level, constitutional reforms are admittedly unlikely. Even if they were undertaken, and existing organizational policies committing IOM to respect human rights and humanitarian principles were confirmed to be binding internal rules, in the absence of effective legal mechanisms to ensure compliance, respect for these obligations remains largely a matter of organizational culture, institutional incentives and political will. Legal strategies alone are insufficient to secure institutional change. This points to the need for a second, related set of reforms, focused on institutional, cultural, and the internal operationalization of commitments related to protection, human rights norms, and humanitarian principles. To ensure that these internal policies are used to maximum effect to strengthen IOM’s support for migrants and not only member states, they should be widely disseminated inside and outside the organization, with staff training and regular review processes in place to support their effective implementation and revision as necessary. Staff evaluation and promotion exercises should also be tied to systematic and successful implementation of IOM’s commitments in terms of human rights protection and respect for humanitarian principles.
Progress also depends on updating assumptions about IOM’s obligations and raising expectations of the organization, including among scholars and advocates. Repeating the trope that IOM has no obligations to people on the move simply because it does not have a formal protection mandate in its Constitution is incorrect as a matter of law and policy. But even more concerningly, it impedes efforts to hold this increasingly influential organization to account for its commitments towards those it claims to serve. For IOM’s critics, such calls for accountability may seem quixotic, given its history and structural constraints. However, like other IOs, IOM has changed over time, including in terms of how its mandate and obligations are understood. If these changes are to benefit migrants and not only state interests, they must be taken seriously. That is, they must be carefully analysed, shored up where appropriate, and used to challenge instances in which IOM may undermine the rights of those individuals it now claims to serve.
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