The cross-party International Development Select Committee’s report, Migration and development: How to make migration work for poverty reduction, published today, is welcomed by the Refugee Council for making a highly valuable contribution to the complex debates around migration.

Maeve Sherlock, Chief Executive of the Refugee Council said:

“This report is a welcome contribution to a maturing debate around migration. The report highlights the links that should be made, but generally are not, between migration and issues such as the arms trade, globalisation, environmental disaster and poverty.

“These issues can only be understood and properly managed once we view them in the round.

“What is required are joined-up policies in response to these findings.

“The solution for Zimbabwean asylum seekers, for instance, is not to prevent them coming here, but to tackle the reasons causing them to leave their homes.

“Policies must be put in place to tackle the human rights abuses that are the fundamental causes of refugee movements. At the same time asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants in Britain need to be treated more fairly and equitably, with a greater understanding of why they come and what valuable contributions they bring.”

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Links

Get the report from the UK Parliament website at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmintdev.htm#reports