is an Irish international businessman and former Attorney General of Ireland, associated with the Fine Gael party. He is a barrister by profession and is a Senior Counsel of the Irish Bar. He is also known for serving in a variety of international organisations, political and business roles. Mr. Sutherland is United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General for Migration and Development. He has held this position since 2006 and was responsible for the creation of the Global Forum on Migration and Development. He is President of the International Catholic Migration Commission and a member of the Migration Advisory Board of the International Organisation for Migration.
You can follow him on Twitter at: @PDSutherlandUN
World Trade and the Doha Round, May 2011
Still sitting
Still sitting
Retired 2015.
Still sitting
Still sitting
Resigned 2011
Retired 2015.
University of Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
European Regional Action Scheme for Mobility of University Students
Responsible for Competition Policy y (and Education for one year). Served in the First Jacques Delors Commission
North–West constituency Irish general election, but not elected
Bencher of the Middle Temple and Honorary Bencher of the King’s Inns. Admitted to the Inner bar in Ireland
LONDON – Voters in the United Kingdom have done the unthinkable, choosing to leave the European Union – a truly noble project that, whatever its shortcomings, has promoted peace and stability across the continent for more than a half-century. Markets have tumbled, Britain’s prime minister has announced that he will resign, and the UK is…
A couple of days ago, European Commission president Jean- Claude Juncker commented that the marriage of the United Kingdom with the European Union had never been a happy one and the divorce would not be amicable. As to the first of these points, from the outset 60 years ago, in the lead-up to the European Coal and Steel Community of…
LONDON – In the last week of May, at least 1,050 migrants and asylum-seekers died in the Mediterranean Sea, victims of the international community’s unwillingness to address the needs of the world’s most vulnerable people. More than 2,800 migrants have died at sea so far this year – up nearly 40% from the same period in 2015.…
This year is likely to be the most momentous for refugee protection and migration since the signing of the Geneva Convention in 1951. Depending on the choices we make, we will either help create more open societies, based on greater international cooperation, or we will abet authoritarian governments and their nationalist agendas. So we must…
Those advocating Britain’s exit from the EU, the world’s largest exporter and importer, would have you believe a number of magical things. First, some claim a post-Brexit UK would miraculously maintain all the rights and opportunities the European Commission has negotiated for it over the years in EU trade agreements. That is simply untrue. The…
Last autumn, I was in Malta at the Valletta Summit on Migration, attended by European and African heads of state and government. I was invited as United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration. As is customary at such events, there was a group photograph, in which I ended up beside German Chancellor Angela…
Originally published in The Observer The European refugee debate reached a new nadir with a proposal to expel Greecefrom the Schengen zone and effectively transform it into an open-air holding pen for countless thousands of asylum seekers. The idea is not only inhumane and a gross violation of basic European principles; it also would prove vastly…
The Mediterranean migration crisis has delivered two critical lessons. First, Europe and the international community have grossly inadequate systems for protecting vulnerable migrants. Second, in the absence of such systems, populist leaders will prey on fear to gain political support, undermining the liberal, tolerant societies that have taken 70 years of hard work to build.…
The death toll resulting from Europe’s paralysis in responding to the influx of refugees from the Middle East and Africa continues to rise. Hundreds of thousands of others have suffered unnecessarily. The European Union’s reputation has been battered, despite bold leadership from Germany, Sweden, and the European Commission. Bitter divisions among member states have jeopardized…
The EU is in disarray. Faced with waves of asylum seekers from conflict-ridden states, too many European countries have acted selfishly and unilaterally, undermining any chance of an effective collective response to the crisis. Rather than calmly handling an eminently manageable situation, they have made Europe appear incompetent, near hysterical and without integrity. This is…
Europeans should help; not so long ago, they were the ones desperately asking, says Peter Sutherland Faced with a tragedy in the Mediterranean, the EU risks transforming it into a self-inflicted political crisis that could divide the union. After 900 people died on a single day, Europe was shocked into expanding its maritime presence. The…
Originally published on FT.com The EU is in disarray. Faced with waves of asylum seekers from conflict-ridden states, too many European countries have acted selfishly and unilaterally, undermining any chance of an effective collective response to the crisis. Rather than calmly handling an eminently manageable situation, they have made Europe appear incompetent, near hysterical and without integrity. This…
A gruesome tragedy unfolded aboard a ship in the Mediterranean Sea this summer. Twenty-nine men, women, and children fleeing crisis-torn countries succumbed to engine fumes in the vessel’s hold. As 60 others scrambled to escape, the human traffickers carrying them to Europe stabbed them and threw them into the sea off the coast of the…
Migration is one of the morally, politically, and economically defining issues of the 21st century. Some 25,000 souls have died trying to cross the Mediterranean since 2000, including more than 1,500 so far in 2015, and many thousands more have perished in the Gulf of Aden and in the South Pacific. There needs to be…
European defense and foreign ministers agreed on Monday to an ambitious naval operation – involving contributions from 12 countries and over 1,000 troops – to disrupt human smuggling and trafficking in the Mediterranean. But military action alone will not end the migration crisis – a crisis that, this year alone, has led to the deaths…
In 2014, more than 190,000 people risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to Europe. Some 3,500 lost the gamble, dying as they tried to traverse what has become the world’s deadliest frontier. There can be no doubting that some who undertook the perilous journey did so simply to search for better-paying…
In the last year, more than 4,000 men, women, and children have lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Africa to Europe. Their tragic deaths have done nothing to slow the human tide, which is swelling by the week, as smugglers on the coast become increasingly brazen and cruel. Thousands of migrants…
On both sides of the Atlantic, anti-immigrant politics are undermining democracies and damaging lives. Far-right nationalist parties are gaining traction in Europe, while millions of undocumented migrants suffer in the shadows. In the United States, President Barack Obama, concerned about his party’s ability to retain control of the Senate, has decided to put off immigration…
The referendum on Scottish independence, due on September 18, comes at a time of growing opposition in the United Kingdom to remaining in the European Union. This is significant, because Scotland is the strongest base of pro-European sentiment in the UK. For example, a poll conducted earlier this year determined that if a referendum on continued EU membership…
The evidence is clear: Migration contributes more powerfully to development than any other means we know. When states and stakeholders gather in October at the second High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development, they need to build on this knowledge by committing to concrete actions. If more states work together and make better-informed policy choices, they…
In 2000, the United Nations established the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to drive progress on important development objectives, such as reducing poverty, promoting gender equality, and curbing disease. But the architects of the MDGs neglected one critical issue: migration. Fortunately, it looks like world leaders will not make the same mistake with the post-2015 development agenda. The…
This month, for only the second time in its history, the United Nations General Assembly will focus on international migration. The stakes are high. In the balance rests not only the well-being of the world’s 232 million migrants, but also the health of our societies and economies. So governments should come to New York to make…
Headlines about migration can seem unbearably stark: attacks on foreigners by neo-fascists in Greece, dozens of domestic workers on death row in the Gulf, a crass and callous campaign by the British government to drive out migrants. Yet, despite persistent and even rising anti-immigrant sentiment in much of the world, promising signs of a more…
Migrants face countless perils. Vicious mafias smuggle them across borders with reckless disregard for their lives. Rapacious recruiters fleece them of their earnings. Abusive employers exploit their labor. And, adding insult to injury, anti-immigrant sentiment erodes the political will to confront these challenges. Yet, when it comes to protecting migrants’ well-being and rights, smart practices…
In September 2000, the United Nations Millennium Development Goalsrallied the international community behind a shared vision. The MDGs, which expire in 2015, signaled a new era of global cooperation, and triggered real progress in terms of lifting millions of people out of extreme poverty, improving health and access to education, and empowering women. The eight original…
The Doha Round of global trade talks appears to have died this year, almost without a whimper. While a small portion of the project may be saved, the essential reality is that this is a unique failure in the history of multilateral trade negotiations, which have transformed the global economy since World War II. Many…
The instant lesson of the US presidential election seemed to be about the power of Latino voters. But the meaning runs deeper and it is relevant to governments around the world. Within hours of President Barack Obama’s re-election last month, a powerful belief took hold: that overwhelming support from Latino voters had helped secure his…
Unlike some in Britain’s Conservative Party, Prime Minister David Cameron has not previously given the impression of being obsessed with Europe. He demonstrated no enthusiasm for the European Union, but he appeared clearly less exercised by its supposed iniquities than many Tories are. This view of Cameron’s position is now difficult to sustain. His long-gestating speech…
The Doha Round of global trade talks appears to have died this year, almost without a whimper. While a small portion of the project may be saved, the essential reality is that this is a unique failure in the history of multilateral trade negotiations, which have transformed the global economy since World War II. Many…
By Peter D. Sutherland and Cecilia Malmstrom Europe faces an immigration predicament. Mainstream politicians, held hostage by xenophobic parties, adopt anti-immigrant rhetoric to win over fearful publics, while the foreign-born are increasingly marginalized in schools, cities, and at the workplace. Yet, despite high unemployment across much of the continent, too many employers lack the workers…
When Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, publicly proclaimed that the ECB would do “whatever it takes” to ensure the future stability of the euro, the effect of his remarks was immediate and remarkable. Borrowing costs fell dramatically for the governments of Italy and Spain; stock markets rallied; and the recent decline…
The “migration dimension” of the Arab Spring should evoke not only the potential short- and longer term movement of North Africans to Europe, but equally how Europe’s fear of migration dampened the broader political and public response to the historic revolutions in the Southern Mediterranean. Europe and international agencies were effective in addressing the related…
Europe’s reaction to the historic revolutions in North Africa has vacillated between exhilaration and fear. The natural instinct to celebrate and support democratization across the Mediterranean has been tempered by concerns that the crisis will spill onto European shores. A few leaders have invoked the post-World War II Marshall Plan as a model for large-scale…
The great irony of the drama over Ireland and its planned referendum is that the exercise of what amounted to a veto by the United Kingdom has left Ireland with no power of veto over what is now an intergovernmental agreement. In the past, treaty changes have had a tortuous history often because of their…
At the height of the Arab uprisings last spring, many Europeans were gripped by nightmare visions of a tsunami of migrants crashing against the continent’s shores. The wave never hit, but its specter fed a tenacious anti-immigrant populism that has concealed an important new trend: migration to Europe – and to the United States –…
Introduction The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiations in the WTO have reached a point where the shape of a worthwhile agreement can be envisaged even if its final delivery is far from guaranteed. This is, therefore, an appropriate time to look closely at what has been achieved and what has been lost and to seek…
I never liked IQ tests and this aversion probably started when I did one to get into Gonzaga. I never understood the result. However, apparently I passed and moved into an environment that certainly greatly influenced my life in many ways. I hope that there was no mistake in attribution that resulted in a deserving…
Are we already seeing the beginning of the kind of downward spiral in trade and cross-border investment which turned the 1930s into an economic and political catastrophe? If so, the outlook is grim indeed, because the globalisation of the past quarter decade has made all our livelihoods much more dependent on international trade and financial…
Last spring, at the height of the Arab uprisings, many in Europe were apparently gripped by visions of a migrant tidal wave crashing its shores. The wave never came. Yet its spectre helped to feed a tenacious anti-immigrant populism that has concealed an important new trend: migration to Europe—as well as to the United States—has…
Introduction Making the case for trade liberalisation has always been easy in theory but an uphill struggle in practice. The tyranny of ‘common sense’ insists that exports are good, imports bad and the balance of trade should preferably be in surplus. Economists since David Hume have pointed out the illogic of the everyday notion that…
Introduction It is sometimes healthy to draw lessons from history, sometimes otherwise. Those who were heavily engaged in the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations have strong views on whether it was a success and, if so, why. Certainly, something worked during the years 1986-94 that lead to what many of us regard as a wholehearted…
A bad deal is worse than no deal at all. On that, at least, U.S. congressmen and Washington’s Doha Round negotiators are at one with Friends of the Earth. But is no deal really better than a worthwhile—if unspectacular—deal? Failure to make a deal at Doha puts at risk the entire multilateral trading system that…
Politicians may well allow themselves to be disoriented by the apparently intractable situation the European Union now finds itself in. The more robust among them will understand that lessons can and should be learned from what has happened. These include, in the first instance, properly interpreting the results and then taking such actions to address,…
The clear votes in France and the Netherlands against the European Union’s Constitutional Treaty were, of course, bad news for Europe. At the very least, they ushered in a period of uncertainty which can only harm the European Union’s standing, in the world and with its citizens. The concern now must be to start a…
Just a few days before Christmas 1993, I had the privilege to gavel a final decision to conclude seven years of negotiations to create a new world trading system. The Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade1 (“GATT”) had come to an end. There was no doubting the huge satisfaction with this…
We should be in no doubt; the new world trading system – which means the World Trade Organisation – is facing the biggest crisis of its young life. In less than three months, trade ministers from more than 140 countries will meet in Doha, Qatar, to try to accomplish what they failed to do two…
I suspect that the Irish are more emotionally attached to a sense of their own nationality than most others. I certainly am. Standing in Stade Francais after the glorious rugby match last year, basking in the international recognition of a figure such as Seamus Heaney or even hearing someone sing Danny Boy, particularly when abroad…
As with all great political projects the completion of the Internal Market, identified by the first Delors Commission as its primary aim, was a deceptively simple one. Both from the economic and political points of view the European Communities (EC) had been in a state of relative stagnation since the creation of the Exchange Rate…