UN Declaration on the Right to Development

This essay proposes an alternative to the contemporary theorization of the relationship between Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) and Migrant Rights. Contemporary theorization of the relationship between IFFs and Migrant Rights solidified a linear correlation between human trafficking or smuggling and IFFs. It is common among existent literature to state that human trafficking and smuggling are some of the contributors to IFFs out of Africa. For instance, the High-Level Panel on IFFs from Africa noted that IFFs “typically originate from three sources: commercial tax evasion, trade mis-invoicing, and abusive transfer pricing; criminal activities, including the drug trade, human trafficking, illegal arms dealing and smuggling of contraband; and bribery and theft by corrupt government officials." Further notable is that analysis of the impact of IFFs on development usually tends to marginalize migrant (“a person outside of a State of which they are a citizen or national, or in the case of a stateless person or person of undetermined nationality, their State of birth or habitual residence”) communities in its theorization or empiricism. That is partly because contemporary development studies fail to recognize the relationship between IFFs and migrants’ right to development. Therefore, this essay is an early-stage critical theorization and a call to action for scholars to theorize the relationship between IFFs and migrant rights to development.