UN claims pandemic has accelerated 'hostile rhetoric' against migrants

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated “hostile rhetoric” against migrants in the world and “radically altered” mobility, claims the United Nations (UN) migration agency.

In the World Migration Report 2022 released on Wednesday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that COVID-19 travel restrictions are creating problems for migration.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered immobility worldwide to an extent unseen in recent history, slowing the pace of human mobility and migration,” said Ugochi Daniels, IOM’s deputy director-general for operations. “The pandemic is estimated to have negatively impacted the total growth of international migrants by 2 million.”

"The pandemic also seems to have accelerated the hostile rhetoric toward migrants that has been growing in the last decade,” said IOM Director-General Antonio Vitorino.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the interconnections between migration and mobility, with COVID-19 travel restrictions resulting in hundreds of millions of people being unable to travel for months on end, and leaving many thousands of migrants stranded and in need of assistance,” said Vitorino.

Migrants count for 3.6 percent of the global population—around 281 million people, according to the report. The number of migrants increased from 2019, which recorded 272 million.

“Our research shows that debunking myth, as well as pre-bunking strategies, can help to mitigate or prevent harm caused by nefarious actors, who seek to undermine balanced discussions on migration,” said Vitorino.