HUMAN RIGHTS AT INTERNATIONAL BORDERS

Contemporary migration is a complex and contested phenomenon. An estimated 281 million people live and work in countries that are not their own; one in 29 persons in the world is currently a migrant living outside their country of origin.1 While that may seem a large number, it is still only 3.6 per cent of the world’s total population. This global migrant population is fairly gender balanced, with 47.9 per cent women (130.5 million) and 52.1 per cent men (141.5 million) comprising the world migration population in 2019.2 The migrant population is diverse in any country; however, it is notably a young population with one out of every seven international migrants (15 per cent or approximately 40 million) under the age of 20.3 Migration is about people and, as such, is a human rights issue; not least because human rights are universal and all migrants have all the human rights guaranteed under international human rights law.