The Global Forum on Migration and Development: Perspectives from Asia and the Pacific

Several governments in the Asia-Pacific region have actively engaged in the United Nations' Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) for the past seven years, as both participants and leaders. Virtually every country in the region has assigned representatives in GFMD's network of country focal points, eight Asia-Pacific countries are part of GFMD Steering Group, and a number have contributed to the roundtable and thematic meetings either as co-chairs or team members. Three countries from the region were also part of a 14-member Assessment Team that outlined the future of the Forum after 2012. The region's active engagement has helped shape the themes and topics of GFMD meetings, beginning with the first meeting convened in 2007. However, during this time, the challenges facing migrants and their families have not abated. To remain relevant, the GFMD must become as instrumental in shaping the reality on the ground as it has been in shaping the global discourse on migration and development. The 2012 GFMD assessment shows participant states' demand for a more development-focused and results-driven forum.The GFMD could provide more opportunities for collaboration between governments and other migration stakeholders. While becoming more action-oriented, it should continue to shape the agenda on migration and development and set international priorities among the wide range of issues that demands attention. Toward these ends, the GFMD would benefit from (1) an enhanced linkage with regional fora and processes; (2) a more dynamic people-to-people networking platform where policymakers can find partners, pilot projects, test ideas, and develop policy and programmatic tools; and (3) a more focused, action-oriented, and results-driven process for the next five years. This brief argues that although the Global Forum on Migration and Development was primarily designed as a venue for changing the discourse on migration, the success of its efforts to date and the pressing need for progress on the ground both indicate that it is time to assess how the Forum can facilitate concrete action

Soft Law and the Protection of Vulnerable Migrants

Since the 1980s, an increasing number of people have crossed international borders outside of regularized migration channels, whether by land, air or sea. Policy debates on these kinds of movements have generally focused on security to the neglect of a focus on rights. In a range of situations, though, irregular migrants, who fall outside of the protection offered by international refugee law and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), may have protection needs and, in some cases, an entitlement to protection under international human rights law. Such protection needs may result from conditions in the country of origin or as a result of circumstances in the host or transit countries. However, this article argues that despite the existence of international human rights norms that should, in theory, protect such people, there remains a fundamental normative and institutional gap in the international system. Rather than requiring new hard law treaties to fill the gap, the article argues that a “soft law” framework should be developed to ensure the protection of vulnerable irregular migrants, based on two core elements: first, the consolidation and application of existing international human rights norm into sets of guiding principles for different groups of vulnerable irregular migrants; and second, improved mechanisms for inter-agency collaboration to ensure implementation of these norms and principles. This article suggests that learning from the precedent of developing the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and its corresponding institutional framework can be particularly instructive in this regard

Evaluation of supply control options for beef

End of project reportThe incomes of Irish cattle farmers benefited greatly from the reform of the CAP for beef and cereals in 1992 and more recently under Agenda 2000. In both of these reforms the institutional support prices were reduced and direct payments (DPs) were used to compensate farmers for the price reduction

Analysis and operational challenges of dynamic ride sharing demand responsive transportation models

There is a wide body of evidence that suggests sustainable mobility is not only a technological question, but that automotive technology will be a part of the solution in becoming a necessary albeit insufficient condition. Sufficiency is emerging as a paradigm shift from car ownership to vehicle usage, which is a consequence of socio-economic changes. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) now make it possible for a user to access a mobility service to go anywhere at any time. Among the many emerging mobility services, Multiple Passenger Ridesharing and its variants look the most promising. However, challenges arise in implementing these systems while accounting specifically for time dependencies and time windows that reflect users’ needs, specifically in terms of real-time fleet dispatching and dynamic route calculation. On the other hand, we must consider the feasibility and impact analysis of the many factors influencing the behavior of the system – as, for example, service demand, the size of the service fleet, the capacity of the shared vehicles and whether the time window requirements are soft or tight. This paper analyzes - a Decision Support System that computes solutions with ad hoc heuristics applied to variants of Pick Up and Delivery Problems with Time Windows, as well as to Feasibility and Profitability criteria rooted in Dynamic Insertion Heuristics. To evaluate the applications, a Simulation Framework is proposed. It is based on a microscopic simulation model that emulates real-time traffic conditions and a real traffic information system. It also interacts with the Decision Support System by feeding it with the required data for making decisions in the simulation that emulate the behavior of the shared fleet. The proposed simulation framework has been implemented in a model of Barcelona’s Central Business District. The obtained results prove the potential feasibility of the mobility concept.Postprint (published version

Chasing Efficiency Can operational changes fix European asylum systems? Bertelsmann Stiftung Migration Policy Institute Europe March 2020

The heightened arrivals of asylum seekers and migrants on European shores in 2015–16 sent policymakers across the continent scrambling for new strategies to manage migration. Proposals to reform the European Union’s legal framework for asylum were the first out of the starting blocks but, several years later, no such agreement has been reached. And with new EU leadership having taken office in late 2019, Brussels is hungry for fresh ideas that will either revive or reform the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). Crucial to this search will be a recognition that, while deficiencies still plague Europe’s asylum systems, these systems have changed significantly since the onset of the migration and refugee crisis—even in the absence of legal reforms

The Rebound Effect in the Aviation Sector

The rebound effect, i.e., the (partial) offset of the energy efficiency improvement potential due to a reduction in marginal usage costs and the associated increase in consumer demand, has been extensively studied for residential energy demand and automobile travel. This study presents a quantitative estimate of the rebound effect for an air traffic network including the 22 busiest airports, which serve 14 of the highest O-D cities within the domestic U.S. aviation sector. To satisfy this objective, passenger flows, aircraft operations, flight delays and the resulting energy use are simulated. Our model results indicate that the average rebound effect in this network is about 19%, for the range of aircraft fuel burn reductions considered. This is the net impact of an increase in air transportation supply to satisfy the rising passenger demand, airline operational effects that further increase supply, and the mitigating effects of an increase in flight delays. Although the magnitude of the rebound effect is small, it can be significant for a sector that has comparatively few options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions

Validation of CFD Codes for the Helicopter Wake in Ground Effect

When a helicopter takes off, lands, or makes hovering or taxiing flights in ground effect, its downwash interferes with the ground. Encounters with such highly turbulent helicopter wakes have been blamed for two fixed-wing aircraft crashes in the United Kingdom. Additional incidents including tents blown away are reported in Japan. Due to these accidents, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the University of Glasgow (UoG) are investigating the helicopter wake structure in ground effect, especially during taxiing, by means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). In this study, CFD codes of UoG and JAXA are validated through comparing numerical results of each party and flight experiment data. As a result, it is found that the CFD codes show qualitatively the same results each other and they are also close to the experiment