https://doi.org/10.37815/rte.v34n1.889

Original paper - English

COVID-19,
Migrants, Refugees, Mobile Workers:

Global Assessment
and Action Agenda

COVID-19,
migrantes, refugiados, trabajadores móviles: evaluación global y agenda de
acción

Patrick
Taran1 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9442-5725,

Olga Kadysheva1  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4810-8964

1Global Migration Policy Associates (GMPA), Geneva, Switzerland

[email-masked], [email-masked]

Sent:               2021/12/13

Accepted:       2022/03/04

Published:      2022/03/15

Abstract

Summary: Introduction,
Methodology, Challenges faced by refugees, migrants, host communities and
countries of residence, Need for urgent,
appropriate action by governments and all other actors, Overarching
normative obligations for treatment of migrants and refugees, A Checklist
of Practical Guidelines for action, legislation, policy and monitoring and
Conclusions.

How
to cite: Taran, P. & Kadysheva, O. (2022). COVID-19, Migrants, Refugees,
Mobile Workers: Global Assessment and Action Agenda. Revista Tecnológica - Espol, 34(1), 28-57. http://www.rte.espol.edu.ec/index.php/tecnologica/article/view/889

The COVID-19 pandemic has
disproportionately affected millions of migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, and
stateless persons as well as IDPs worldwide. At the same time, the dependence
of economies and societies on migrant and refugee labour
to perform essential work in such sectors as healthcare, transportation,
services, agriculture, food production and distribution, construction,
industry, commerce, and others became even more obvious. However, many policies
and actions addressing COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic were
established with little or no consideration for migrants and refugees,
resulting in excessive COVID cases, high mortality rates, unemployment, and
loss of livelihood across migrant and refugee populations. The paper argues
that a comprehensive and rights-based package of measures is needed for
effective response to the pandemic, relevant and proportionate to prevent the
spread of coronavirus and allowing for people and economies to sustain
socio-economic development on local, national, and regional levels. Based on
in-depth review and critical analysis of literature as well as synthesis of
approaches and recommendations contained in guidance documents from
international organisations, the paper provides
policy lines and actions/action steps on COVID-19 and migrants and refugees. It
covers the interrelated issues of health and healthcare including vaccination;
non-discrimination and inclusion; social protection; employment; community
support and protection; gender; refugee specific measures; cross-border
mobility; data, narrative, and communications; and recovery. Only a
comprehensive package of measures that includes migrants, refugees, asylum
seekers, stateless persons and IDPs in national and local COVID-19 responses
can possibly solve challenges posed by the pandemic in our global, mobile, interconnected and interdependent world.

Keywords: migration, health, migrant workers, asylum seekers, stateless persons,
internally displaced persons (IDPs), human rights, discrimination, social protection,
labour, employment.

Resumen

La pandemia de COVID-19 ha
afectado de manera desproporcionada a millones de migrantes, refugiados,
solicitantes de asilo y apátridas, así como a desplazados internos en todo el
mundo. La dependencia de las economías y sociedades de la mano de obra de
migrantes y refugiados para realizar el trabajo esencial se volvió aún más
obvio en sectores como la salud, el transporte, los servicios, la producción y
distribución de alimentos, la construcción, la industria, el comercio y otros.
Sin embargo, muchas políticas y acciones que abordan la COVID-19 se
establecieron con poca o ninguna consideración por los migrantes y refugiados,
lo que resultó en casos de COVID excesivos, altas tasas de mortalidad,
desempleo y pérdida de medios de vida por muchas poblaciones de migrantes y
refugiados. El documento argumenta que se necesita un paquete integral de
medidas relevantes y proporcionadas, basado en los derechos, para prevenir la
propagación del coronavirus y permitir que los pueblos y las economías
sostengan el desarrollo socio-económico a nivel local, nacional y regional.
Basado en un análisis crítico de la literatura y la síntesis de recomendaciones
de organizaciones internacionales e informes de expertos, el documento
proporciona líneas de política y acciones sobre la COVID-19, migrantes y refugiados.
Cubre las cuestiones interrelacionadas de la salud, la asistencia sanitaria y
la vacunación; la no-discriminación e inclusión; protección social; empleo;
apoyo y protección de las comunidades; género; medidas para refugiados;
movilidad transfronteriza; datos, narrativa y comunicaciones; y recuperación.
Solo un paquete integral de medidas que incluya a migrantes, refugiados,
apátridas y desplazados internos en las respuestas la COVID-19 puede resolver
los desafíos levantados por la pandemia en nuestro mundo móvil, interconectado
e interdependiente.

Palabras
clave: migración, salud, trabajadores migrantes,
solicitantes de asilo, apátridas, desplazados internos (IDPs),
derechos humanos, discriminación, protección social, trabajo, empleo.

Introduction

COVID-19 has shown us that excluding and
discriminating against groups of people makes us all weaker. To build societies
that can be more resilient and resistant to all kinds of shocks, we need to act
with greater solidarity. Instead of repeating harmful narratives of fear and
exclusion, it’s time to welcome people into our communities, to reimagine our
collective future.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle
Bachelet (OHCHR, 2020b).

As demonstrated
worldwide since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many response measures
and/or the lack thereof, created compounded health, social and economic risks,
and costs of the still-spreading coronavirus. The aggregate response –or rather the absence of a globally
coordinated, scientifically sound and cooperative solidarity response–
continues to impede ending the pandemic as well as economic and social
recovery. The recent emergence of new variants –omicron in November 2021– appeared to aggravate the situation
globally. Migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, mobile and
seasonal workers remain among those most at risk and those most severely
affected. In consequence, economic and social problems and costs for nations
and societies continue to be exacerbated worldwide.

Major challenge arises not only from the
pandemic itself but from measures by some government, employer and private
actors vis-a-vis migrants, refugees, IDPs and stateless persons. These have
included fear-based and non-science-grounded actions resulting in seriously
detrimental consequences for economies, businesses, health, social welfare and
social cohesion of communities and entire countries.

Without –or despite– accurate assessment of risks and scientifically sound and
context-appropriate approaches, governments worldwide continue to take poorly
informed and reactive measures often based on narrow political considerations
that exacerbate privation and suffering faced by populations, particularly
migrants and refugees, as well as aggravating economic costs.

The big
picture

At
the beginning of 2020, there were an estimated 281 million foreign-born people
residing in countries other than where they were born or held original
citizenship (UNDESA, 2021a) representing about 3.6 percent of the
world’s population – a proportion that has only “inched up” since 1970 when the
estimated migrant population was 2.5% of the global total. 73 per cent of
international migrants worldwide were between the ages of 20 and 64 years,
compared to 57 per cent for the total world population (UNDESA,
2021b).

That UN global estimate includes refugees and
asylum-seekers but cannot account for internally displaced persons (IDPs) who
remain on the territory of their country of origin. Latest UNHCR figures as of
mid-2021 (updated 10 November 2021) counted 26.6 million refugees, including
5.7 million Palestinians under UNRWA (United Nation Relief and Works Agency)
mandate, 4.4 million asylum seekers and 3.9 million Venezuelans displaced
abroad not counted among refugees or asylum-seekers (UNHCR, 2021e).
At least 10 million people in the world today are stateless (UNHCR, n.d.). UNHCR also estimated a total of 48 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) as of
end-2020 (UNHCR, 2021e).

Many
other foreign persons in temporary,
short-term, or seasonal employment and/or residence situations are not counted
in UN and other statistics on international
migrants when their sojourn is less than a year and/or if they retain
formal residency in another country. The UN estimate does not include persons
visiting a country for short periods such as tourists, nor commercial or
transportation workers who have not changed their place of residence, nor
itinerant cross-border traders, several hundred thousand of whom circulate
across respectively Eastern, Southern and Western Africa while remaining
legally resident in their home country (Taran, 2018).

The
movement of people across borders remains a misunderstood and underestimated
lifeline for peoples, countries, and economies worldwide. In 2019,
international migrant workers constituted 4.9 per cent of the global labour force (ILO, 2021). Most
industrialized and many developing countries rely on foreign-born migrant
workers for 5 to 20 percent of their workforces. The
share of migrant workers in total labour force by
region is: 41.4 per cent overall in Arab States –up to 90 per cent in several
GCC countries; 20.0 per cent in Northern America; 18.4 per cent in Northern,
Southern and Western Europe; 9.4 per cent in Eastern Europe; and 12 per cent in
Central and Western Asia (data for 2019) (ILO, 2021a). As the pandemic situation has highlighted, many
essential workers in healthcare, food
production, processing and distribution, transportation, etc. are migrant
workers.

While the COVID-19 situation has unprecedented aspects,
international normative standards, ample scientific knowledge, and experience
from previous pandemics provide the basis for policy and action to meet
emergency needs, sustain economic activity and social welfare, and shape
recovery.

Methodology

This article is based on a broad review of
relevant literature from early 2020 to December 2021, also drawing on earlier
works on health and pandemics. Its scope is inclusive of asylum seekers and
stateless persons and refers to internally displaced persons (IDPs) whose
situations and treatment are often similar to those of
refugees and international migrants.

The situation narrative and critical analysis
were derived from and built on information and perspective garnered across a
broad range of contemporary literature, including scientific reports,
international institutional documents and web-posts, authoritative journal
articles and current reporting in periodicals considered credible. The
comprehensive agenda of policy lines and actions/action steps on COVID-19 and
migrants and refugees was synthesized and elaborated from guidance and recommendations
by international organisations across the UN system
and others, using a recombinant approach applied in preparing international
common agenda and consensus documents and recommendations. The extensive
review, analysis and comprehensive synthesis of collective recommendations
sought to cover interrelated issues and challenges of health and healthcare
including non-discrimination and inclusion; vaccination; social protection;
employment; community support and protection; gender; cross-border mobility;
refugee specific measures; data; narrative; communication; and recovery.

This article is framed as a policy brief to support government
authorities, parliamentarians, city governments, social partners, civil society
organisations and refugee and migrant actors with
concrete practical guidance for effective, rights-based lines of action to:
protect people’s safety and health; provide attention to health and sustenance
for migrants, migrant workers, refugees, asylum-seekers, mobile workers,
internally displaced persons (IDPs) and stateless persons; ensure protection of
human rights, including health-related rights and labour
rights of all concerned; and enable economic and social recovery.

An earlier version of this research was
published in May 2021 in Spanish in the journal Revista
Compendium: Cuadernos de Economía
y Administración (Taran and
Solorzano, 2021).

Challenges
faced by refugees, migrants, host communities and countries of residence

An Overview

Tens of millions of migrants, refugees, asylum
seekers, IDPs and stateless persons worldwide were from the outset among those
most severely affected by the COVID-19 global pandemic worldwide. Millions more
temporary, short-term, seasonal, and itinerant migrants are similarly affected.
According to UNHCR, more than 134 countries hosting refugees have been affected
by the pandemic and reported local transmission of COVID-19 (UNHCR, 2021b). 85 per cent of the world’s refugees are hosted in
developing countries. The Least Developed Countries provide asylum to 27 per
cent of the total (UNHCR, 2021e).
“The various population groups face
very different living conditions depending on their legal status, demographic
characteristics, the country where they live, their location in camps or in
urban settings, among other factors” (Vishwanath, Alik-Lagrange
and Aghabarari, 2020, p.6).

However, many measures, policies and actions
addressing COVID-19 were and continue to be taken with little or no
consideration for or attention to migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, IDPs or
stateless persons. Nor for the labour and economic
consequences of restricting cross border/international mobility. Excluding
those groups, who are part of the society and key economic actors in initial
and ongoing responses has had dire consequences not only for these populations,
but also on human, health, social, and economic conditions for countries of
residence and for countries of origin.

Perhaps
most serious are measures formal or informal, intentional
or not, that exclude foreigners, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, stateless
persons and/or displaced persons from healthcare and from coronavirus
prevention and treatment. Such measures range from ‘citizens only’ restrictions
to immigration control enforcement leaving migrants and refugees –particularly
those in irregular status and/or with non-extended permits– fearful of
approaching health care providers due to lack of documentation and fear of
discrimination and/or deportation. Especially problematic has been deportation
of Covid-carrying persons from detention or job dismissal, without informing
them, the transporter, or health authorities.

Health care services have been unavailable, inaccessible,
or non-existent in practical terms for migrants and refugees in many places
even when they do have legal status. Health care may be non-existent or
prohibitively expensive for those not legally resident on the territory, who
may also fear coming forward for testing or treatment because of the risk of
detention or deportation for irregularities in immigration status. Similarly,
they may face difficulties in obtaining information on risks and mitigation
measures due to language barriers and communications not accessible by them.

Measures widely imposed included closing borders
and restricting or stopping altogether movement of migrants, as well as
refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless persons despite adverse consequences to
food production, health-work, aged- and child-care, transportation and other essential
work and to recovery –as well as to refugee protection; lockdown measures that
left migrants, refugees, IDPs, asylum seekers and stateless persons highly
exposed to infection and to transmission; retaining foreign workers in
‘essential work’ but with little or no personal protection equipment (PPE) in
exposure to high risk working and living situations; expulsion and deportation
from territories of foreigners, including deportation flights to homelands
despite air travel shut-down and the risk of refoulement of refugees and asylum
seekers.

These consequences included absence of needed
health care workers, high infection and death rates among immigrant, migrant
and refugee health care workers, reduction of food production due to absence of
migrant workers for crucial planting, cultivating, harvesting, and processing
activity for which local and native workers are not available, and constraints
in transportation where many trucking, bus and railway workers are migrants
and/or operate internationally.

The economic costs of constraints on mobility of
workers at all skills levels continues to debilitate entire sectors of
economies in countries across Africa, Eurasia, Europe, and the Americas,
particularly those more dependent on international mobility of people to
provide labour and skills. Seasonal agricultural
work, food production, health care, construction, local/regional industrial
production and marketing, distribution of goods and services are among essential sectors adversely affected in
many countries.

Migrant Workers

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on
migrant workers and their access to decent work. Beyond the immediate public
health crisis, response measures including lockdowns and border closures had
specific implications for the hiring and employment conditions of migrant
workers. These measures increased the [risks faced by] migrant workers at the
same time as economic and social dependence on migrant workers who deliver
essential services such as healthcare and sanitation has deepened” (Jones, Mudaliar and Piper, 2021, p.vii)

Reports by human rights monitoring groups on
situations in a number of countries described
pre-existing and new conditions faced by migrants, refugees and forcibly
displaced people worldwide that have been exacerbated by COVID-19. As a country
report by a human rights monitoring body put it, “Migrant workers... face a
range of entrenched abuses from employers, including deceptive recruitment
practices, wage theft, passport confiscation, unsafe living and working
conditions, and excessive work demands, which indicate forced labor and violate
domestic and international standards. The spread of Covid-19 and the lockdown
to contain it has exacerbated these conditions, as workers face job loss,
unpaid leave, reduced salaries, and forced work without pay” (Human Rights
Watch, 2020a).

Dire situations for migrant workers were reported
in Middle East and Gulf countries, also in countries across Asia, Africa,
Eurasia, Europe, North and South America and the Pacific region. Literally
millions of migrant workers were arbitrarily and immediately dismissed from
work across the Middle East region and elsewhere. In some countries, migrants
were physically expelled from or compelled to leave cities or places where they
were living and working; drastic compelled quarantines in place –such as
“sealing off” migrant neighbourhoods, migrant
dormitories/living quarters and/or industrial areas (Middle East Eye, 2020).

The “economic and social challenges emerging
from the COVID-19 pandemic cast a new light on services at the core of
functioning local economies. Sectors such as food processing, delivery, or
health care are vital for the continuity of economic activity... During the
pandemic, these sectors were defined as ‘essential’. The crisis has initiated a
new reflection of essential services and the people that work in them, the
so-called ‘key workers’. In particular, the role of migrants who often work in
low-paid but vital occupations has gained greater recognition across OECD”
(OECD, 2020b, p.2).

“Migrants … account for 14% of key workers across European regions, 5%
from EU countries and 9% from non-EU countries. … Key sectors such as
distribution, food processing, or health care strongly rely on migrants for
their workers, especially in urban environments. … Across 31 European
countries, “migrants play a crucial role in health care, where 23% of all
doctors and 14% of nurses are foreign-born. In cities such as London or
Brussels, around half of all doctors and nurses are migrants. Capital regions
have the highest share of migrant key
workers (20%). Similarly, cities rely more on migrant key workers than other
areas, especially in low-skilled occupations where migrants make up 25% of
workers” (OECD, 2020b,
p.1-2).

According to OECD research, “in all countries for which data are available, immigrants’
unemployment (in 2020) increased more, compared to their native-born peers. The
largest increases for immigrants were observed in Canada, Norway, Spain,
Sweden, and the United States. In Sweden, almost 60% of the initial increase in
unemployment fell on immigrants” (OECD, 2020a). “Unemployment and underemployment data [in Canada] in April
2020 shows that mostly affected were those with temporary work, with less than
one year at their job and not covered by a union or collective agreement” (Triandafyllidou and Nalbandian, 2020,
p.5) –situations common for many migrant workers
worldwide.

Multiple Mitigation Measures

However, numerous countries around the world adopted
contingency measures to keep systems operational and mitigate impacts on
migrants and citizens (EMN, 2021). While many countries
imposed restrictions on admission and entry of migrants at the outset of
the pandemic, emergency measures allowing mobility for “essential workers” were
quickly put in place at borders around the world to ensure that migrant workers
including frontier, seasonal and transportation workers needed for agriculture,
food production and processing, transportation and healthcare could cross
borders despite lock-downs, confinement, “no travel” measures or closed
borders.

EU countries and others allowed for continued admission of
workers for essential occupational sectors, notably health, agriculture, and
transport. Non-EU OECD countries also identified health, agriculture, and food
security as essential sectors; support for critical infrastructure was cited by
some countries (EMN, 2021). For example, while entry to Canada of high-skilled
foreign workers was halted at the start of pandemic restrictions, migrant
workers in the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program were exempted from
restrictions and the Federal Government quickly introduced special arrangements
to bring foreign workers to Canadian farms and fisheries
(Hennebry and KC, 2020; Triandafyllidou
and Nalbandian, 2020).

In a number of countries, measures
were taken to mitigate effects of the pandemic for migrants already on
territories, particularly migrant workers, such as to ensure that those
affected by travel restrictions or restrictions on immigration services did not
fall into irregular status. “In EU Member States and Norway, these included
automatic extension of residence permits, tolerated stays, removal of the
obligation to leave, and/or the suspension/ extension of procedural deadlines
... Non-EU OECD countries also made similar efforts to ensure that migrants did
not fall into an irregular situation, for example, in the US, where from March
2020, timely online requests for extension of stay were possible to mitigate
the effects of COVID-19” (EMN, 2021, p.1).

To address labour shortages,
especially in seasonal activities, some EU Member States implemented measures
to facilitate employment access for third-country nationals already on the
territory. “Regularisation of third-country nationals
employed in certain key sectors was permitted in a limited number of cases,
both in EU and non-EU OECD countries” (EMN, 2021, p.2).

“Most EU Member States reported that COVID-19 related
healthcare was available for all migrants, with costs met from public health
insurance or social security and/or from State public health funds. For regular
[authorized] migrants who experienced a drop or loss in income, underlying
rules on access to general healthcare were maintained, allowing access to
general healthcare in most reporting Member States” (EMN, 2021, p.2).

Mobile, cross-border, and seasonal workers

Millions of mobile cross border workers,
seasonal and temporary workers were immediately affected by lockdowns and
border closings at the outset of the pandemic–and some remain so in February
2022, two years on. The immediate result and the continuing consequence in many
situations, was large economic cost to local economies dependent on that labour in agricultural and industrial production and
distribution, health, transportation, and other sectors as well as cross-border
and regional trade and marketing of goods and services provided by those
workers.

Some countries were effectively denied supply of
and/or outlets for distribution of local and national production, whether
agricultural, artisanal, or industrial, including basic foodstuffs, health
equipment, medications and supplies, and other essential goods. This was the case in regional economic communities
(RECs) in Central, Eastern, Western Africa, in the MERCOSUR South American
common market area, in Central America, in the Caribbean region, and South-East
Asia as well as across the integrated economies of Europe in and beyond the EU
and the European Free Trade Association area.

However, “Germany, Spain, and other countries in
Europe (such as Switzerland) have gone to extraordinary lengths to admit
seasonal agricultural workers from other countries (such as Romania and
Bulgaria) or further afield (such as Morocco), including chartering flights and
exemptions from travel restrictions” for passage through other countries when
borders were officially closed. (Hooper, 2021 citing Hooper and le Coz, 2020).
Canada –much of whose agriculture depends on seasonal workers– engaged in similar
efforts to bring workers from usual source countries including Guatemala, Jamaica and Mexico.

Refugees, IDPs, stateless persons and
asylum-seekers

Refugees, asylum seekers, IDPs and stateless
persons, especially those in crowded camp situations, with dire sanitary and
hygienic conditions and the impossibility of social distancing, are
particularly at risk of coronavirus infection. Major challenges include absence
of health care, insufficient food, crowded living quarters, absence of running
water, poor underlying health, etc. UN news, in August 2020, reported that the
World Food Programme (WFP) was forced to reduce its
food and cash assistance for refugees in Eastern Africa by up to 30 per cent
and feared that reductions could worsen in coming months unless urgent
additional funding is received (UN news, 2020). These conditions exacerbate
coronavirus transmission, serious illness resulting, and absence of, treatment
for forcibly displaced populations.

The COVID-19 pandemic had far-reaching effects on all areas
related to asylum and migration throughout 2020 and continuing into 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted
in a drastic reduction in refugee movement across borders and in resettlement
due to border closures, travel restrictions and pushbacks. As of May 2020,
nearly 100 countries had temporarily denied access to their territory; by May
2021 almost 60 countries still denied access (Tanner, Mugera,
Tabasso et al, 2021).

While many countries in Europe had lifted travel
restrictions and reopened borders by July 2020, mobility for refugees and
asylum seekers remained impeded. Resettlement departures were halted for the
first time in history and visa processes for complementary pathways for
admission of refugees significantly delayed. People in refugee-like situations
transiting through South-Eastern Europe experienced entry bans in several
countries. Pushbacks on land and at sea have been reported in 2021 along
frontiers between Greece and Turkey, as well as at borders of Balkan and
Central European countries and recently at borders between Belarus with Poland
and Lithuania.

Pushbacks were also reported in African, Asian
and Middle Eastern countries as well as at borders of Mexico, Guatemala, and
the USA. While some pushbacks have not explicitly cited COVID as a
justification, the US executive order establishing push-back of potential
refugee-asylum claimants on that country’s southern border explicitly cited a
national health emergency justification.

Refugee protection itself has been undermined. Border closures
and restrictions on international mobility have prevented refugees escaping
from situations of persecution and refugee movement to safe havens. Access to
asylum remains a vital, but threatened right.
Government measures in several countries, in some cases endorsed by
legislation, restricted access to the country by refugees and asylum seekers.
People arriving at borders seeking safe haven have
been returned to neighbouring countries, told to
apply for asylum at consulates and embassies or to wait elsewhere–often
indefinitely, for claims to be processed. “While States have a sovereign duty
to protect public health, measures that restrict access to asylum should be
temporary, necessary and proportionate and respect the
prohibition on returns to persecution and danger. ... Externalization can
amount to warehousing asylum seekers indefinitely in isolated places, ‘out of
sight out of mind’, exposing them to danger and chain refoulement” (Triggs, 2020).

Health and well-being of refugees, IDPs, stateless persons
and asylum-seekers remains the second main issue. Inability to maintain even
basic hygienic conditions at vastly overcrowded refugee camps in many places,
notably reception and identification centers (RICs) in Europe, led to severe
and prolonged quarantines in those camps and centers. Inadequate conditions for
basic health and hygiene prevail in many IDP and refugee camp facilities,
particularly in African and Middle East and without considering additional
measures for masking and distancing. Migrant and refugee detention facilities
also became major hotspots of coronavirus transmission in many countries. IDPs
and stateless persons face increased challenges in accessing healthcare due to
absence of documentation, lack of availability of services and discrimination.

Surveys from eight countries, including Bangladesh,
Ethiopia, Iraq, and Yemen, showed a deterioration in employment, food security
and access to health and education for refugees (Tanner, Mugera,
Tabasso et al, 2021). The pandemic-fostered-rise in
gender-based violence and violence against children, and the triggered societal
stresses have hit people of concern to UNHCR hardest (UNHCR, 2021c).

“Modelling and simulation analyses conducted in specific
areas estimate an increase in poverty among the forcibly displaced and their
host communities as a result of the simultaneous
effects of COVID-19 and other aggravating socio-economic factors. In Lebanon,
due to the occurrence of COVID-19 during a deep economic and social crisis, the
number of Syrian refugees below the national poverty line is expected to
increase by 430,000 in 2021 compared to the period just prior to the pandemic”
(Tanner, Mugera, Tabasso et
al, 2021, p.1).

Furthermore, at least 12 million people with disabilities are
forcibly displaced worldwide according to UNHCR, while the real number may be
higher. “Forced displacement disproportionately affects people with
disabilities. They are often at higher risk of violence, discrimination,
neglect, gender-based violence, exploitation and abuse, face barriers to access
basic services, and are often excluded from education and livelihood
opportunities,” said Gillian Triggs, UNHCR’s
Assistant High Commissioner for Protection (UNHCR,
2021d).

Countries of Origin

Further complicating the tragedy has been the
dilemmas faced by millions of people in migrant origin countries who were
dependent on the incomes and remittances of migrant worker family members
abroad rendered unemployed and, in some cases, deported to homelands with few
possibilities to be reintegrated in remunerative activity. This was aggravated
by local home country and community perceptions that returning migrant workers
–members of their own families and communities– are vectors of COVID and should
be kept away (Asharq Al-Awsat, 2020).

During the first wave, several migrant worker
origin countries refused return/re-entry by their own nationals, leaving
citizens expelled or deported from other countries in a quasi-stateless
situation and their families destitute. However, many countries organized
repatriation efforts in the early months of the pandemic, including special
transportation arrangements for citizens abroad. Most countries continue to
permit re-entry of citizens and lawful residents despite border closures.
However, migrant worker countries of origin in Africa, Asia and the Americas
initially had few or no measures for testing and advising returnees upon or
after arrival, leaving repatriated migrants to return to home communities
across the countries when some were, usually unknowingly, coronavirus
vectors.

However, data on the actual number of workers
returned or deported to homelands remains non-existent, as is data on how many
have since redeployed or returned abroad. Anecdotal data suggests that the
actual numbers of workers returned to country-of-origin homelands was a small
proportion of the global ‘migrant’ workforce.

Global remittance estimates for 2020 are $706
billion compared with $722 billion in 2019, a reduction by only 2.2 percent,
whereas in mid-2020 predictions were that remittances would fall by more than
15%. The current forecast for 2021 is $751 billion (Ratha,
Ju Kim, Plaza, Seshan et al, 2021). In 2021,
remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are projected to
reach $589 billion, registering a 7.3 percent increase over 2020. The recovery
in 2021 follows the resilience of flows seen in 2020, when remittance flows to
low- and middle-income countries recorded only a modest 1.7 percent decline to
$549 billion compared to 2019 ($559 billion) despite one of the deepest global
recessions on record. Remittances currently represent more than three times the
value of official development assistance and, excluding China, remittances are
more than 50 percent higher than foreign direct investment, highlighting the
importance of remittance flows in providing for local sustenance in recipient
countries during periods of economic hardship (Ratha,
Ju Kim, Plaza, Seshan et al, 2021).

Labor and economic problems getting worse

“The Covid-19 pandemic is not only having a
seismic impact on global public health but also causing chaos for the economy,
with supply chain disruptions and labor shortages a big problem for businesses
around the world” (Ellyatt, 2021). Supply bottlenecks
and shortages of raw materials, components, and consumer goods remain
widespread in February 2022, and have worsened in recent months. One
authoritative assessment by MPI highlighted, “As European countries seek to
revive their economies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, an acute labor
shortage in a variety of sectors risks stopping the recovery in its tracks”
(Hooper, 2021). Especially concerning is that “many of the supply and labor
shortage issues are expected to last for many years to come” (C. Tang in Popa,
Ford and Schaller, 2021, p.3), a USA assessment widely shared elsewhere.

The labor shortages are in large part attributed
to the COVID-19 pandemic, its direct impacts, response measures that initially
shut down labor mobility worldwide, and continuing or reimposed restrictions.
The impact is serious, constricting supply, production, and distribution “from
automobiles to appliances to toothpaste” in the US for example. US employers
specifically cite constraints in immigration as a major impediment to resolving
the current lack of workers for jobs unfilled due to pandemic related factors,
including workers unable to come back to work because they’re caring for family
sick with COVID-19, are sick with the virus themselves, or lack childcare
(Popa, Ford and Schaller, 2021). “Many workers are also leaving their jobs in
record numbers and are delaying coming back to work. For example, in August
(2021), 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs” in the Great Resignation as it is being called (ibid). Subsequent months
saw similar levels of job leaving in the USA. Reports from the UK in the fall
of 2021 reported transportation delays and breakdowns resulting in widespread
fuel shortages at distribution stations, empty supermarket shelves, ‘dry’ pubs
across the country unable to obtain beer, and pork and poultry unprocessed and
un-marketed, all attributed to absences of workers. A shortage of 100,000 lorry
drivers was widely evoked, a consequence of departure of many truck drivers in
Britain natives of EU countries who departed after the coincident double wham
of Brexit and COVID and could not be replaced.

Illustrative of situations facing many
countries, “Even before Singapore stopped entries from India and other South
Asian nations, departures and tighter travel rules were already keeping foreign
workers away from the country… the crunch has led to delays of construction
projects by as much as a year, resulting in a surge of 30 per cent in the price
of labour and sparking worries over excessive
workloads” (DT Next, 2021). Construction delays were seen to risk "badly
disrupted" housing, hospital and transit line
projects, slowed real estate sales, stalled industrial and commercial facility
openings, and weaker consumption. Furthermore, construction industry groups
warned that the current workforce is "already working at maximum capacity,
increasing the risks of workplace incidents" (DT Next, 2021). Meanwhile,
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said
in July 2021 that construction sites in Russia were short of 1.5-2 million
people and called the situation “a catastrophic shortage of workers” (Hashimova, 2021); much of construction labour
in Russia was provided by migrant workers from Central Asian countries, many went
or were sent home after the outset of the pandemic.

While some supply and production delays and
shortages and their economic consequences are attributed to transport
impediments or supply chain interruptions, most assessments reveal that lack of
and departure of workers combined with migration restrictions are major factors
–notably in key sectors of agriculture, construction, food processing,
healthcare, and transportation heavily dependent on foreign or immigrant
workers in many industrialised countries. Foreign
workers compelled to leave from countries at the outset have been impeded by
COVID restrictions and anti-immigration measures such as Brexit in the UK from
returning or arriving. The challenges are complex; some factors pre-date the
COVID pandemic and others, such as more people taking early retirement, leaving
jobs or the workforce altogether, are prompted or exacerbated by the pandemic
situation.

The consequences of labour
shortages in large part deriving from COVID-19 and subsequent mobility barriers
and constraints affect everyone. As Bloomberg analysts put it: “Robots may
replace us eventually, but for now COVID-19 has revealed both how desperate
businesses are for workers of the human variety and the broader economic
consequences of that desperation. Companies are raising wages to attract
talent, which in turn is helping boost inflation, hitting 6.2% in the U.S. last
month and currently running at 8.1% in Russia” (Flanders and Sasso, 2021).

Discrimination and xenophobia

A sharp
and generalized rise in racist/xenophobic discourse and violence targeting
foreigners, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, IDPs and stateless persons in
context of COVID is reported worldwide. Manifestations include “violence,
discrimination, arbitrary denial of services, heightened exclusion or other
forms of disparate negative impact in the COVID-19 crisis against minorities
including Roma, people of African Descent, people of Asian descent, refugees,
asylum seekers, migrants and stateless persons, internally displaced persons
and religious minorities, as well as other persons and groups exposed to stigma
and/or discrimination such as LGBTI people, indigenous peoples, as well as
based on caste” (UN Network Racial Discrimination, 2020, p.2). UNHCR assessed that xenophobic messages on social media, in the news or in
official discourse led to violence and discrimination against non-nationals
including incidents of eviction, denial of medical service, or expulsion from
hotels. (UNHCR, 2020b). “The COVID-19 pandemic has created a
heightened risk of discrimination and exclusion of marginalized individuals,
groups and communities” (UN Network Racial Discrimination, 2020, p.1).

Horrific
treatment was reported in several countries. In a GCC country, more than 20,000
migrant workers, predominantly from Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Sri
Lanka, and Sudan, were concentrated into “squalid desert camps”, 50 to 200
persons sheltered in the same spaces with no running water and overflowing
sewage. Local security forces reportedly shot tear gas, stun grenades and
rubber bullets at migrant detainees who protested, while an actress and actor
respectively called for foreigners' deportation and to "throw them into
the desert" (Ullah, 2020).

Migrants and others presumed to be foreigners
have faced deadly violence. Reports emerged in August 2020 of dozens of African
migrants who had been shot on both sides of a border in the Middle East in
April, with COVID 19 fears cited as a pretext (Human Rights Watch, 2020b). News
reports and monitoring bodies have reported increases in violent attacks –some
deadly– on persons of Chinese or other Asian appearance across Africa, the
Americas and Europe. UNHCR offices also reported increasing incidents of
discrimination, stigmatization and xenophobia against refugees and displaced
people, exacerbating tensions with local communities. Lockdowns and increased
family tensions also led to spikes in gender-based violence across the world
(UNHCR, 2020b).

“There has also been a proliferation of conspiracy theories
and hate- or bias-based discourse in connection with COVID-19, including with
anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Roma (based on anti-Gypsyism),
or other racist, xenophobic or sectarian subtexts.
Narratives stressing geography rather than medical terminology to refer to
COVID-19 are stigmatizing, and encourage racist or xenophobic attitudes and
attacks, including against persons and groups who are forcibly displaced and
stateless who may be at greater risk during the pandemic” (UN Network Racial
Discrimination, 2020, p.2). Migrants, refugees, displaced persons
and other marginalized groups have been accused of spreading the virus since
the outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020 (Reuters, 2020; WHO, 2021).

Such actions “exacerbate fear and worsen the situations of
various minority groups, people of
African descent, people of Asian descent, or people considered foreigners –
persons already facing threats of discrimination or exclusion” (UN Network
Racial Discrimination, 2020, p.2).

Gender: migrant women and COVID-19

The impacts of COVID-19 and ill-considered
responses have been highly gendered, particularly for migrant and refugee women
and girls. The pandemic highlighted risks women migrants face in employment, at
home and in day-to-day activity. As migrant women tend to be concentrated in
low-skilled, low-paid and informal jobs, they continue
to face higher risks of job and income loss in the pandemic-provoked economic
crisis (Rakotonarivo, 2020). Many migrant
women were and remained employed in health care and other essential work on the frontlines of the pandemic. Almost 70% of
health workers across OECD member countries are women (OECD, 2020c). In many
countries, women migrant workers constitute the majority of
health workers (Foley and Piper, 2020). Studies conducted in Spain, Italy and
the US demonstrated that between 69-75.5% of healthcare worker COVID-19
infections were in women (UN Women, 2020b).

Most migrant domestic workers are women; many lost jobs since the outset of the
pandemic and had to return to their countries of origin. Travel bans and
restrictions put those who had lost jobs and residence permits in a dire
situation. Many faced delays or non-payment of wages, as well as violence and
harassment by former employers. Those who kept their jobs generally found
themselves overworked as their employers were more often at home. There were
reported cases of being exposed to increased levels of stress and violence
during confinement with their employers (Rakotonarivo, 2020).

Many women migrants are in essential occupations where
physical distancing is difficult or impossible. Those in health care have had
to work longer hours to handle large influxes of COVID patients and cover for
sick colleagues. Many women workers including migrants have faced significantly
increased family responsibilities related to care and education as a result of suspension of in-class schooling and
childcare services.

Domestic
violence against women and children has risen, while domestic violence in
migrant households is likely hugely under-reported. Violence against women is
already an epidemic with 137 women killed every day in the world by a family
member. Living in confinement and in times of economic stress increases the
risk of sexual exploitation and violence against women. Failing to take into account gendered dimensions in the response to the
pandemic not only exacerbated existing inequalities but created new ones (IPU, 2020a).

Migrant women, especially those in informal work
and or in undocumented situations, faced little or no social protection and
faced difficulties obtaining health care, particularly sexual and reproductive
health care indeed already prior to the pandemic (UN Women, 2020a). Higher
incidence of poverty and poor housing conditions compounding risks of
infection, lack of social
protection preventing access to healthcare or sick leave, and reductions in or
suspension of prenatal, birthing and maternity care by
COVID-overwhelmed health systems are further challenges faced by female
migrants and refugees as the pandemic continues (Rakotonarivo, 2020). An
extensive survey of 170 Latin American migrant women in Valencia, Spain in the
fall of 2020 concluded that the social-health
crisis resulting from COVID-19 aggravated the situation of migrant women,
particularly those in irregular migration situations, with loss of employment,
deepening precarity and increasing anxiety and psycho-social distress including
depression. The report noted that the prior absence of minimal social
protection reaching those most at risk left many migrant women without any
support for basic needs, a situation made both more evident and worse by the
pandemic and its consequences (Palop Lainez, Rueda and Salas, 2020).

Migrant and refugee women in countries with
gender discriminatory provision in nationality laws face exacerbated risks. In
many countries, refugees and IDPs depend upon the informal economy, and they
were among the first to feel the economic impacts of lockdowns. (UNHCR, 2020a)
Many lost their jobs, were evicted from their homes and their children were out
of school for many months due to COVID-19 impacts. Those who continued to work
often were and remain exposed to risks of COVID-19 infection and other
illnesses.

Twenty-five countries still have gender
discriminatory provisions in their nationality laws denying women equal rights
with men to confer nationality to their children while at least fifty countries
deny women and men equal rights to confer nationality to non-citizen spouses.
(Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights, n.d.) Both types of legal
gender discrimination can lead to statelessness and often result in family
members of female citizens having to rely on visas to lawfully reside in the
country of their mother or spouse. In consequence, children share the risks
faced by immigrant and refugee parents of exclusion from health care, COVID
prevention and mitigation efforts, as well as denial of economic assistance, basic
nutrition support and stimulus needed
for decent living, even to survive.

Vaccine Access

Eighty-five per cent of refugees, most IDPs, and
a large portion of migrants reside in developing countries. However, 80 per
cent of all vaccine doses have been given in high- and upper middle-income
countries (UNHCR, 2021f). Huge barriers impede vaccine access for many of the
world’s refugees and migrants, notably vaccine unavailability along with
limited allocation and little implementation capacity. Systems to monitor
products and processes and identify and vaccinate people are weak in some
countries –and for marginalized populations in many others, while health
systems everywhere are struggling to maintain essential health services.
Several refugee-hosting countries have only reached very small proportions of
their population. UNHCR highlights that the activities strengthening support
for local actors and addressing misinformation are key to ensuring the
successful delivery of vaccines to local communities, especially those most
at-risk (UN/ Red Cross/Red Crescent, 2021). However, vaccine scarcity remains a
major barrier for refugees and IDPs as well as many migrants, while vaccine
hesitancy adds complications (UNHCR, 2021a).

Of the 160 countries that submitted information
to UNHCR, 99% of them have either explicitly included refugees in their
vaccination plans or have provided that they will do
so. As of September 2021, UNHCR had confirmed vaccination of refugees and/or
other persons of concern in 121 countries. Vaccination campaigns commenced
across all 21 countries in West and Central Africa and all countries in the
region agreed to include refugees in their plans (UNHCR, 2021a).

Reliable data is crucial

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the
critical importance of reliable data in addressing local and global
humanitarian, development and social challenges and
for informing the design and delivery of policies, services and interventions.
Data deficiencies are acute for populations particularly at risk in the
COVID-19 pandemic, among refugees, migrants, stateless persons, mobile workers
and IDPs. Knowledge on access to and availability of health care, decent
work/employment, basic income, education, and freedom of movement remain
woefully inadequate, making appropriate responses and adequate planning and
delivery impossible (Tanner, Mugera, Tabasso et al, 2021). These populations, or portions of
them, are often not included in –or are deliberately excluded from– official
statistics. National statistical systems, along with
other basic infrastructure notably for health are often weakest in the low- and
middle income- countries hosting more than 86% of the world’s refugees and IDPs
(Gillsäter, 2021).

Need for urgent, appropriate action by governments and
all other actors

Despite
huge challenges faced by millions of migrant workers, refugees, asylum-seekers,
IDPs and stateless persons worldwide, most responses to the pandemic have been
and remain unilateral, national, uncoordinated, and often counterproductive.
Coordination, cooperation, and common action internationally have been
conspicuously weak, slow, or non-existent.

A major concern is to ensure that responses to
the coronavirus pandemic are rights-respecting, appropriate and proportional to
both preventing the spread of coronavirus and ensuring peoples –and economies–
abilities to sustain national, community and individual welfare, to anticipate
sustainable recovery and to build forward
together.

The response lines can be categorized into ten
main themes, recognising that issues are
inter-related, and that a sustainable and effective response requires a
comprehensive approach with interdependent policy lines and action measures
across all themes. No quick fixes will resolve the complex dilemmas, nor work
on their own. Instead, seeking quick fix
solutions will divert attention from obtaining political and public support and
resources to sustain the nationally and locally appropriate response packages
that will make the difference over
time.

These thematic areas listed in Table 1(without
an order of hierarchy beyond the first) are discussed below in part 6.

Table 1

A Checklist of Practical Guidelines on COVID-19
and migrants and refugees

Values-,
science- and experience-based policy lines and actions/action steps

on COVID-19 and
migrants and refugees

1.

Right to health, health-related
rights, health care, vaccine access

2.

Universal non-discrimination, inclusion, equality of treatment

3.

Community support and protection measures

4.

Immigration, movement across borders, non-refoulement

5.

Employment, migrant worker protection, migrant/refugee entrepreneurs

6.

Social
protection; access to schooling and education

7.

Refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, IDPs: specific measures

8.

Gender-specific considerations

9.

Accurate and reliable data,
information, and knowledge

10.

Recovery, Building Forward
Together

Table
by authors

Overarching
normative obligations for treatment of migrants and refugees

International human rights instruments and International Labour Standards (ILO Conventions and Recommendations)
delineate rights and responsibilities imperative to address COVID-19, including
health-related rights and rights to social protection. Most countries have
ratified most of the nine core International Human Rights Treaties[1]
while all ILO member States are bound to respect the eight fundamental ILO
Conventions on non-discrimination/equality of treatment, abolition of forced labour, prevention of worst forms of child labour, and respect for freedom of association and
collective bargaining rights[2].
Other International Labour Standards provide
normative guidance on occupational safety and health (OSH), social protection,
and decent work as well as for
payment of wages and benefits to migrant workers including upon
return/expulsion.

Specific normative guidance on refugees, asylum-seekers,
and the prohibition of refoulement, especially relevant in this time of
COVID-19, are provided by the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the
Status of Refugees[3]
one or both ratified by 149 countries. The right to seek asylum and the
prohibition of discrimination are also articulated in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless
Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness[4]
and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement[5] provide normative guidance
for those groups especially at risk of COVID-19.

Three international Conventions provide legal standards
specifically on migration for employment, rights of migrant workers and
migration governance (one or more ratified by nearly 100 countries): the
International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers
and Members of Their Families (ICRMW), 1990[6] (one of the nine core human
rights Instruments), ILO Convention on Migration for Employment (Revised), 1949
(No. 97)[7]
and the Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Convention, 1975 (No.143)[8].
The ICRMW provides definitions for migrant workers, family members and specific
categories applicable to nearly all international migrants worldwide.

“All people in the
territory or under the jurisdiction of a State, regardless of their nationality
or migration status, have an equal right to health. States have an obligation
to guarantee the right to health to everyone without discrimination, including
on grounds of nationality and migration status. The scarcity of resources is
not a sufficient basis for treating migrants’ healthcare needs differently”
(OHCHR, 2020a).

Although not legally
binding, the Global Compact on Refugees (UN General Assembly, 2018b) and the
Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (UN General Assembly,
2018a), both adopted in December 2018, provide further guidance on protection
of and assistance to, respectively, refugees and migrants.

A Checklist of
Practical Guidelines for action, legislation, policy
and monitoring

The following checklist provides values-, science- and
experience-based policy lines and actions/action steps on COVID-19 and migrants
and refugees. These guidelines consider social, political, legal, environmental
and health determinants and draw on lessons from other pandemics notably HIV
and AIDS, as well as knowledge and experience in salient reports on migration,
health epidemiology and pandemics (ILO, 2017; WHO, 2018; WHO, 2019). Thus,
there is also a comprehensive synthesis of approaches and recommendations
contained in thirty guidance documents by international organisations
on COVID-19 and migrants/refugees listed below in Table 2.

Table 2

List of guidance documents by
international organizations on COVID-19 and migrants, migrant workers,
refugees, stateless persons, and IDPs consulted for the checklist

WHO

ILO

IOM

UNHCR

OHCHR

UN Women

IASC, IFRC, IPU

WHO (World Health Organization), 2020

ILO (International Labour Organization), 2020a

ICC-IOM (International
Chamber of Commerce- International Organization for Migration), 2020

UNHCR (UN Office of the
High Commissioner for Refugees), 2020c

OHCHR (Office of the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights), 2020a

UN Women, 2020a

IASC (Inter-Agency Standing Committee), 2020

WHO Europe, 2020

ILO, 2020b

IOM, 2020

UNHCR, 2020d

OHCHR,

2020c

UN Women (Asia and the Pacific), 2020a

IFRC (International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) et al, 2020

WHO, 2021b

ILO, 2021b

IOM, 2021a

UNHCR, 2020e

OHCHR-ACHPR-Council of
Europe-IACHR, 2021

UN Women (Asia and the Pacific), 2020b

IPU (Inter-Parliamentary Union), 2020a

IOM, 2021b

UNHCR, 2020f

UN Women (Asia and the Pacific), 2020c

IPU, 2020b

IOM, n.d.

UNHCR, 2020g

UN Women (Asia and the Pacific), 2020d

UNHCR, 2021g

UN Women (Europe and Central Asia), 2020

Table by
authors

Health, the right
to health and health-related rights and health care, including vaccine
access.

Main concerns
include inclusion of access by migrants and refugees to preventive, palliative
and curative health care, in particular reliable information, testing,
treatment and vaccination for COVID-19, and occupational health and safety
protection, notably personal protective equipment (PPE) for migrants in health,
industrial, commercial, etc. employment. Response lines include:

·
Include all migrants, refugees,
stateless persons, IDPs and asylum seekers in local and national COVID-19
testing, prevention, mitigation. vaccination and treatment.

·
Waive fees for COVID-19
testing, vaccination and treatment, regardless of a person’s citizenship,
nationality, or legal migration/resident status in the country.

·
Provide information on
prevention of spread, early diagnosis, vaccination, and treatment of COVID-19
in languages migrants, refugees and IDPs understand, in accessible formats.

·
Create
information materials in migrant and refugee languages suitable for low
literacy levels.

·
Ensure
timely and effective access to health facilities, goods, and services to all,
regardless of immigration status, by legislative, policy, administrative, and
practical measures, including the flexibilization of movement and documentation
requirements.

·
Create/maintain firewalls between health and immigration
services, allowing stateless persons, persons at risk of statelessness,
migrants in unauthorised situations and others to
access services without intimidation and fear that they will be identified to
immigration control authorities.

·
Implement fully all necessary
measures for protection and support of migrant workers in essential work, especially those in health-related and care work,
notably risk mitigation and prevention training, provision of PPE, and
protective workspaces.

·
Ensure inclusion of migrants,
IDPs, stateless persons, asylum seekers and refugees on an equal basis in
mental health and psychosocial support.

·
Implement training programmes for healthcare professionals to build basic
psychosocial helping skills to people directly or indirectly affected by
COVID-19.

·
Include migrants, IDPs,
stateless persons, asylum seekers and refugees on an equal basis in
vaccination.

·
Increase support for local delivery mechanisms and capacity to deliver vaccines
quickly and fairly and to strengthen national and local health systems for
preparedness and response.

·
Ensure
that vaccines get from suppliers to those most at risk including refugees,
migrants, asylum seekers, marginalised groups,
stateless persons, and those in areas affected by armed conflict.

·
Waive the
indemnity and liability requirements for humanitarian buffer applicants.

Non-Discrimination
and Inclusion

Universal
non-discrimination, inclusion, and equality of treatment are essential for effective pandemic
response, mitigation, and recovery.

·
Ensure that non-discrimination,
equality of treatment and inclusion are core legal, regulatory, and institutional
parameters for all public and private health and social protection measures for
all persons present, including migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, stateless
persons, and internally displaced persons.

·
Build on,
adapt, and utilize existing legislative frameworks on anti-discrimination,
explicitly incorporating nationality as well as national origin, ethnicity,
race, and religion among prohibited grounds.

·
Ensure that
migration status is excluded as grounds for exclusion or limitations on
provision of health services, vaccination, social protection and social and
human services access and delivery.

·
Take
measures to prevent, monitor and address racism, xenophobia, discrimination,
hatred, and violence including holding perpetrators to account.

·
Engage local
and national anti-discrimination and human rights monitoring bodies in
monitoring compliance with non-discrimination law and regulations, reviewing
government and other actor policy and actions, taking up complaints,
documenting evidence, and otherwise supporting migrants, refugees, mobile
workers and other non-nationals, stateless persons and IDPs, vis a vis
discrimination and xenophobia.

·
Include
participation of migrants and refugees, as well as worker unions and civil
society actors, in developing, implementing, and monitoring anti-discrimination
and inclusion strategy, policy and actions.

·
Initiate
and support campaigns combating xenophobia and racism and ensure that public
discourse and responses to COVID-19 do not contribute to those.

Community support
and protection measures

Providing for
effective coronavirus prevention, protection and treatment measures is vital at
the local, community level. Key is taking account of conditions of localities
and housing where migrants and asylum seekers reside; situations of refugee and
IDP camps; and circumstances where adult populations depend on day-to-day work
outside home –when they can get it– to survive, where social distancing is
impossible, and stay-at-home lockdowns unsurvivable.
Response measures include:

·
Determine and apply viable,
appropriate measures for access to sustenance and/or remunerative activity in
situations where social distancing and isolation are effectively impossible,
such as crowded housing, slum neighbourhoods, migrant
worker dormitories, refugee camps.

·
Implement safe-work measures in crowded workplaces (e.g., meat packing
plants, garment mills), that may be hotspots of transmission.

·
Allow for free movement with
masks, social distancing guidelines and PPE where people and economies depend
on day-work for sustenance, especially where basic needs support is not
feasible or deliverable due to absence of resources, lack of infrastructure,
weak or ineffective government institutions, etc.

·
Implement/continue measures of
income-loss compensation and/or minimum income/resources to sustain essential
food and housing for migrants, refugees, and other displaced people in place.

·
Establish and implement adequate measures to respond to heightened risks of
violence, including gender-based violence, due to the pandemic.

·
Support the
engagement of migrants, refugees, and displaced people in COVID-19 responses,
particularly professionals, healthcare trained professionals and community
leaders.

Immigration,
movement across borders and non-refoulement

Cross border
movement of workers remains vital to sustaining food supply, health care,
agricultural and industrial production, construction, transportation, and
economies in general in many countries worldwide, particularly in regional
economic communities and common markets. Providing or maintaining recognition
and status to all migrants and refugees present in a country is paramount to
ensure that appropriate coronavirus information, prevention, testing,
vaccination, and treatment reach all persons equitably in every community and
place. Imperative measures include:

·
Eliminate border barriers
impeding movement to work of seasonal, frontier, temporary, posted,
transportation and other workers needed/employed in national economies and/or
across borders, particularly in regional free movement regimes.

·
Facilitate adjustment of
status, temporary extension and/or renewal of permits, and group
determination/actions (such as extension of permits for classes of migrants
rather than individual procedures) permitting migrants to remain in authorized
status.

·
Conduct regularisation
of status for migrants to ensure legal recognition, access to vital services,
and employment in regular situations with protection of rights and decent work.

·
Ensure that access across borders
to seek refugee protection by asylum seekers and refugees is not impeded in the
guise of coronavirus restrictions or for other reasons.

·
Maintain explicit legal
protection for migrants and refugees’ rights and dignity during measures of
mandatory confinement as well as travel/movement restrictions.

·
Maintain unfettered access to
asylum/refugee claimant and determination procedures.

·
Designate birth and death
registration services as ‘essential services’ and continue to operate, with
temporary operational modifications as necessary and appropriate.

·
Allow online notification and
registration of vital events, extend timelines for registration of birth, and
put in place a fee waiver for late birth registration.

·
Enact reforms to uphold
citizens’ right to confer nationality on spouses and children and to acquire,
change, and retain nationality on an equal basis regardless of gender.

·
Suspend all detention of
migrants/asylum seekers, non-nationals except for criminal violations.

·
Ensure that any returns are
carried out on a voluntary basis, meeting requirements of a fully informed
decision, without coercion and supported by availability of valid alternatives.

·
Ensure that all returns comply
with non-refoulement and the
prohibition of collective expulsions, as well as guarantees of due process,
access to lawyers and translators, and the right to appeal, and that any
returns are compatible with sustaining public health in the country of return.

Employment,
migrant worker protection, inclusion of migrant/refugee entrepreneurs

Dismissals and
layoffs of workers –particularly migrants, closures of businesses, border
closures, and departure and deportations in reaction to the pandemic reduced
capacity and competence of entire workforces as well as specific sectors in
local and national economies. These, and ongoing restrictions on mobility and
migration have contributed to ongoing shortages of goods and services, notably
in food supply and essential health care and to aggravated deficits of workers
in demand as of 2021. Immediate measures are imperative to:

·
Uphold strict conditionalities
of/for layoffs and for departure from the country of employment, including
adequate notice period, payment of all wages/salary owed, and transfer of
earned social security contributions and entitlements.

·
Ensure that employers comply with all national and local requirements for
public health and occupational safety and health and communicate critical
information to employees, particularly (im)migrant
and refugee workers.

·
Assess where presence and availability of international workers (in
complementarity with native workers) are required to maintain and/or rebuild
production and distribution activity and to provide for needed skills,
productivity, and innovation across workforces.

·
Include migrant, refugee and other displaced entrepreneurs in economic
incentives and in credit provided to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

·
Facilitate recognition of
qualifications, notably for refugee and migrant workers in health and other
essential occupations and sectors.

·
Take measures to retain
employment and available foreign workers and skills.

·
Formulate guidelines and
provide incentives for reanimating local and national economies during and
after periods of continued special measures (such as lockdowns), with attention
to facilitating access by needed foreign skills and labour.

Social
protection and education

Social protection
and access to schooling have been devastated worldwide by the COVID-19 pandemic
and measures taken to impede its propagation; migrants and refugees are among
those most devastatingly affected. Urgent measures to ensure provision of
social protection and schooling for migrants and refugees and others similarly
affected include:

·
Guarantee
access to social services, including mental and psychosocial support for all,
particularly children and adolescents and unaccompanied and separated minors.

·
Ensure provision of basic
health care and attention to all children, including migrant and displaced
children, and children remaining 'at home' with parents abroad.

·
Provide for social protection
safety net coverage of all migrants and displaced people.

·
Establish/maintain special
basic needs support measures to families cut off from overseas migrant breadwinner/s support.

·
Extend financial support
packages to all those residents in the territory who meet needs, risk, or
vulnerability criteria, regardless of legal status.

·
Ensure access by all migrant,
refugee, asylum seeker, stateless and displaced children to virtual learning
if/when classroom learning is restricted due to coronavirus measures, including
by providing devices or alternatives to those who do not have reliable
telecommunications connectivity or personal computer or cell-phone hardware.

·
Provide for
continued access to emergency shelters for migrants in transit, homeless
people, and victims of disasters with no barriers as to their migratory status.

·
Extend
rent/housing payment moratoriums and/or payment support aid for COVID-related
impediments and suspend evictions from homes and shelters.

Refugees,
stateless persons, IDPs and asylum seekers’ specific measures

Upholding refugee
protection is crucial under any circumstances, as is maintaining the mechanisms
of access to protection and of adequate assistance. Precautions for preventing
spread of COVID can easily be maintained or applied without impeding access to
protection, to legal recognition and to decent living situations for refugees,
asylum-seekers, stateless persons and IDPs:

·
Maintain access to refugee
protection, including by ensuring access to asylum,
individual assessment, best interest assessment and determination, and international protection under
international human rights and refugee law.

·
Adapt
registration and processing of new asylum applications by mail, phone, email,
and other virtual communication tools, as well as by making adjustments to
facilities in accordance with public health guidelines,
so those seeking protection are still able to do so.

·
Automatically extend asylum
documents and civil registration deadlines, while services are suspended and
for a reasonable period after registration services have restarted to allow
persons to renew their documents before they become invalid.

·
Facilitate nationality
procedures and change discriminatory nationality laws and practices,
particularly those tolerating gender discrimination.

·
Reinstate/Allow rescue at sea
operations in the Mediterranean region, South Asia and elsewhere.

·
Provide full access by
refugees, IDPs, stateless persons to healthcare, including coronavirus
treatment, testing, prevention, and vaccination, similarly to local
populations.

·
Ensure adequate health
facilities as well as food, water, sanitation, and hygiene for all displaced
people, those in camp situations and holding facilities.

·
Provide for adequate space and
reduce/prevent overcrowding at refugee and IDP camps and processing centers, by
expanding facilities and/or transferring refugees from overcrowded facilities
to decent housing, respecting the family unit.

·
Include forcibly displaced
people in national response plans and programmes, as
well as in social safety nets and in-kind support responding to the
socio-economic impact of the pandemics.

·
Advocate for/ensure
appropriations of additional allocations to UNHCR and the WFP to enable decent
housing/shelter and adequate nutrition for all at refugee and IDP
camps/facilities.

·
Re-establish
resettlement, complementary pathways, and regional and national relocation
operations and programmes.

Gender specific
considerations

The impact of
COVID-19, and especially of often ill-considered response measures, has been
and remains highly gendered for migrant and refugee women and girls. A
comprehensive set of measures is needed to:

·
Ensure that all COVID prevention
and mitigation efforts and education are gender responsive and gender
appropriate.

·
Directly address specific risks
for women migrants and refugees, including those in healthcare, aged care, and
other essential work.

·
Encourage prevention measures
and provide PPE to reach women at workplaces and at home.

·
Ensure focused and targeted
outreach to provide health information, including specifically about COVID, to
migrant, asylum seeker, IDP, stateless and refugee women and girls including in
isolated 'hard to reach' situations.

·
Ensure that all pregnant women
and mothers of infants enjoy adequate and appropriate pre-natal, birthing, and
post-natal attention, including equipping care providers and maternity
facilities with PPE material for all women receiving care.

·
Maintain or provide (if
non-existent) reproductive health, family planning and contraceptive
information, services and products for all refugee and migrant women and
adolescent girls.

·
Recognize, suppress, and
provide safety options and shelters for victims of increased domestic violence
against women and children during the pandemic, particularly during lockdowns.

·
Provide access to menstrual
hygiene products, particularly to women and girls in camp situations.

·
Support prevention and response
initiatives targeting men and boys, highlighting positive male role models, and
promoting non-violent behaviour.

·
Support helplines, safe-houses,
support groups and other mechanisms of solidarity for migrant/refugee women.

Data,
Narrative and Communications

Obtaining and
providing accurate, reliable information and knowledge reaching all populations
and individuals is primordial to overcoming the pandemic and the detrimental
effects it and many response measures have had. Communication of accurate
information and narratives of respect and solidarity is indeed key to rolling
back discrimination, exclusion, and racist-xenophobic violence.

·
Collect, analyze, and apply
gender-, age-, and migration-situation disaggregated data locally and
nationally on needs for, access to and availability
of health care; decent work/employment; basic income; social protection;
schooling and education; and freedom of movement as well as COVID-specific
information.

·
Articulate and popularize a
narrative of solidarity, respect and common interest regarding migrants,
immigrants, refugees, IDPs, stateless persons and asylum seekers.

·
Emphasize that migrants,
refugees, and other displaced people are part of our communities and make
essential contributions to economic and social well-being for all.

·
Clarify that migration and
refugee protection are not major risk factors for transmission; rather travel per se –for business, tourism, or
holidays– is a concern, specifying that most transmission was, remains and will
be domestic «community» exposure everywhere.

·
Provide communications and
dedicated outreach efforts in locations, languages, and channels of
communication of populations present, including immigrant, migrant, refugee,
stateless and displaced persons.

·
Monitor and correct
misinformation, including by engaging trusted community members and leaders to
promote circulation of accurate knowledge and to contest misinformation.

Recovery,
Building Forward Together

While the end of the pandemic and general
social, employment and mobility recovery remains less than imminent, it is
timely to prepare for rebuilding forward
together. Main challenges include employment reduction and stagnation
remaining unabated in major economic sectors in many countries; business
failures rising particularly among SMEs; controls on cross-border mobility
remaining in place or being reimposed; and socio-economic situations for large
numbers of people worsening as relief funds are not extended, moratoriums on
rent and mortgage payments expire, and crises in governments remain unresolved.
Sustainable recovery and rebuilding of economies and societies will necessarily
include:

·
Strengthening universal quality services and social
protection made available to, accessible by, and with, equality of
treatment for all migrants and refugees. Implementation of the Universal Social
Floor in all countries is key. Explicit inclusion of all migrants, refugees,
stateless persons, and displaced persons in COVID prevention, testing, PPE,
vaccination, and treatment as needed.

·
Establishing UBI –universal basic income with
coverage of all resident migrants and refugees, regardless of status, as the
only way to leave no-one behind,
particularly in contexts of aggravated unemployment and accelerated business
failures.

·
Articulating employment rich recovery plans with
employment support measures, both immediate and for sustainable recovery,
ensuring equal access to employment for migrant workers and support for migrant
and refugee entrepreneurs.

·
Strengthening decent work, workers’ rights and labour standards
regulation, implementation, monitoring and
enforcement, with explicit inclusion of equality of
treatment/non-discrimination in law, application of international labour standards, and labour
inspection covering all migrant workers.

·
Regularising status of migrants in irregular situations recognizing that most migrants enter destination countries by
regular means although some overstay permits and/or take up employment without authorisation, while many migrants worldwide are in
free-movement spaces with rights to mobility, residence, and establishment.

Conclusions

Migrants, mobile
workers, refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, and internally displaced
persons (IDPs) remain among the most severely impacted, most at risk, and least
protected peoples in the ongoing pandemic. Ill-considered response measures
excluding or ignoring migrants and refugees –or targeting them as scapegoats-
have significantly worsened health, social, economic, and political impacts of
the pandemic crisis. While some improvements in health and pandemic-response
policy and practice have been implemented, the pandemic appears set to
continue. Without deliberate and comprehensive attention to the situations of
migrants and refugees and their inclusion in overall response, prevention and
recovery measures, the pandemic itself and its nefarious impacts on populations
and communities worldwide will not be overcome.

There are no simple
solutions, quick fixes, or easy remedies; a comprehensive package of measures
is imperative. While some can be accomplished by administrative action, all
need public oversight and legislative enabling, including by ensuring that
resources are in place to include migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, stateless
persons and IDPs in national and local COVID-19 responses and recovery.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to
express their gratitude to Kareen Jabre at IPU
(Inter-Parliamentary Union) and Ana Carolina Pinto Dantas
and Safak Pavey at UNHCR (the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees) office who provided editorial review and contributions to an
earlier draft, and to Nayeth Solorzano at ESPOL for
her co-authorship of the previous edition in Spanish of this research. Initial
support for research for this brief was provided by IPU.

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IPU (2020b). Human Rights and COVID-19: A
guidance note for parliaments. https://www.ipu.org/human-rights-and-covid-19-guidance-note-parliaments

OHCHR (2020a). COVID-19 And The Human Rights Of Migrants: Guidance. 7 April 2020. https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Migration/OHCHRGuidance_COVID19_Migrants.pdf

OHCHR (2020c). Joint Guidance Note on the
Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Human Rights of Migrants. UN Committee
on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their
Families and UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants. 26 May
2020. https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Migration/CMWSPMJointGuidanceNoteCOVID-19Migrants.pdf

OHCHR-ACHPR-Council of Europe-IACHR (2021).
Joint Guidance Note on Equitable Access to COVID-19 Vaccines for All Migrants.
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, African Commission on Human
and Peoples' Rights, Council of Europe, Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights. https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Migration/JointGuidanceNoteCOVID-19-Vaccines-for-Migrants.pdf

UNHCR (2020c). Communities getting
involved: Supporting Community Leadership in the Response to the COVID-19
Pandemic. June 2020. https://reporting.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/DIP%20CBP%20brief_C-19-Communities%20Getting%20Involved%20June%2020.pdf

UNHCR (2020d). COVID-19 Emerging Practices
on Livelihoods and Economic Inclusion, May 2020. https://www.unhcr.org/publications/brochures/5ecfacab4/covid-19-emerging-practices-livelihoods-economic-inclusion.html

UNHCR (2020e). Emerging Practices: Mental
health and psychosocial support in refugee operations during the COVID-19
pandemic. https://www.unhcr.org/5ee2409b4.pdf

UNHCR (2020f). Gender-based violence
prevention, risk mitigation and response during COVID-19. Manual and Guideline.
April 2020. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/gender-based-violence-prevention-risk-mitigation-and-response-during-covid-19

UNHCR (2020g). Supporting continued access
to education during Covid-19. Emerging Promising Practices, Issue 2. July 2020.
https://www.unhcr.org/5f06d92e4.pdf

UNHCR (2021g). The Impact of COVID-19 on
Stateless Populations, June 2021. https://www.refworld.org/docid/60b8d6d84.html

UN Women (Europe and Central Asia) (2020).
Brief on the gender perspective and guidance for all efforts related to
COVID-19. April 2020. https://eca.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/05/brief-on-the-gender-perspective-and-guidance-for-all-efforts-related-to-covid19

UN Women (Asia and the Pacific) (2020). Guidance
Note for Action: Addressing the Emerging Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on
Migrant Women in Asia and the Pacific for a Gender-Responsive Recovery. UN
Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Field%20Office%20ESEAsia/Docs/Publications/2020/04/Migration-f-spotlight.pdf

UN Women (Asia and the Pacific) (2020).
Guidance Note for Action: Gender-Sensitive Private Sector Response to COVID-19
for Accelerated and Inclusive Economic Recovery. UN Women Regional Office for
Asia and the Pacific. https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Field%20Office%20ESEAsia/Docs/Publications/2020/04/guidance%20for%20action%20Private-Sector-f.pdf

UN Women (Asia and the Pacific) (2020).
Guidance for Action: Supporting SMEs to Ensure the Economic COVID-19 Recovery
is Gender-Responsive and Inclusive. UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the
Pacific. https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Field%20Office%20ESEAsia/Docs/Publications/2020/04/SMEs-f.pdf

UN Women (Asia and the Pacific) (2020).
Action Brief: Women as a Force for Accelerated and Inclusive Economic Recovery
Post-COVID-19 in Asia-Pacific. UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the
Pacific. https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Field%20Office%20ESEAsia/Docs/Publications/2020/04/200414_COVID%20Action_V13.pdf

WHO (2020).
Preparedness, prevention and control of coronavirus
disease (COVID-19) for refugees and migrants in non-camp settings: Interim
guidance. 17 April 2020. Geneva: WHO. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/preparedness-prevention-and-control-of-coronavirus-disease-(covid-19)-for-refugees-and-migrants-in-non-camp-settings

WHO Europe (2020). Promoting the health of
migrant workers in the WHO European Region during COVID-19. Interim guidance, 6
November 2020. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe.  https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/336549

WHO (2021b).
Refugees and migrants in times of COVID-19: mapping trends of public health and
migration policies and practices. 17 June 2021. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240028906

Salient background reports on migration and
health, epidemiology and pandemics:

ILO (2017). Promoting a Rights-based
Approach to Migration, Health, and HIV and AIDS: A Framework for Action.
Geneva: ILO. www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---gender/documents/publication/wcms_605763.pdf

WHO (2018). Health
promotion for improved refugee and migrant health. Copenhagen: WHO Regional
Office for Europe; 2018 (Technical guidance on refugee and migrant health). https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/388363/tc-health-promotion-eng.pdf

WHO (2019).
Promoting the health of refugees and migrants. Draft global action plan,
2019–2023 Report by the Director-General. 25 April 2019. https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA72/A72_25-en.pdf

[1] See the listing and full texts at https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CoreInstruments.aspx

[2]  ILO.
Conventions and Recommendations. https://www.ilo.org/global/standards/introduction-to-international-labour-standards/conventions-and-recommendations/lang--en/index.htm

[3] See full texts at https://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10 ; background information and lists of
States parties at https://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html

[4] https://www.unhcr.org/un-conventions-on-statelessness.html

[5] https://www.unhcr.org/protection/idps/43ce1cff2/guiding-principles-internal-displacement.html

[6]  Text and
ratification status at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CMW.aspx

[7] Text at: https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO:12100:P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:312242:NO

[8] Text at: https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO:12100:P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:312288:NO