A/HRC/37/51 instrumentally deployed to influence electoral outcomes. The media too often simply reproduce and amplify these overly simplistic and acutely inaccurate narratives about people on the move. Some States try to restrict the availability of migration through the imposition of registration requirements, the restriction of benefits for newcomers, and border controls, including stringent local residency requirements and international visa regimes. B. Hostile environment 23. The challenges that defenders of people on the move face arise within a broader phenomenon of shrinking space for civil society. Human rights defenders face an increasingly complex and coordinated web of restrictions on their activities that represent an existential threat to free and open societies. Although each attack on a defender is made within a specific context, and can and should receive discrete attention, the Special Rapporteur is now convinced that such incidents are not isolated acts, but rather betray the broader, concerted nature of attacks against those who try to embody the ideal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of creating a world free from fear and want. Patterns in tactics are visible, ranging from copy-cat legislation restricting the freedom of non-governmental organizations to restrictions on access to resources, to threats and violent repercussions against defenders whose activities threaten vested interests. Moreover, the international community has failed to respond to the concerns of the Special Rapporteur on this point, which have been repeatedly expressed since the establishment of the mandate. 24. Certain features of the shrinking civil society space pose particularly large challenges for people on the move and defenders working their behalf. The characterization of defenders as “foreign agents”, for example, plays into the discourse that people on the move and their allies represent a seditious threat. Similarly, foreign funding rules often restrict people on the move of access to their own or other resources abroad. Many States complain about the inequitable “burden” created by people on the move, while simultaneously restricting access to funding from abroad, which could be used by defenders to better mitigate some of the challenges faced by both people on the move and host communities. 25. Nor should the discussion of shrinking civil society space obscure the reality that the repression of civil society, and of human rights defenders, is not uniform. Some defenders have faced long-standing difficulties and dangers, long predating the recent global trend. In the context of the present report, people on the move as defenders of their own rights have long been denied a right to any speaking position, excluded from political discourse as outsiders and non-citizens. They continue to face threats and violence far in excess of that faced by their supporters and allies. Civil society space has not only shrunk but is nearly closed for people on the move seeking to defend their rights. V. Root causes of violations 26. Beyond the shrinking civil society space, there is a constellation of discrete economic, social and political phenomena that underpin the challenges that defenders of people on the move face. The mistreatment of these defenders is inseparable from the commodification of the people whose rights they champion, the shift in public discourse towards a securitized, rather than humanitarian, approach to people on the move, and the repressive utilization of citizenship and status to separate people on the move from the rights to which they are entitled. A. Commodification of migrants 27. Migrant labour is an economic resource, both of receiving jurisdictions through the expansion of the labour market and of sending jurisdictions through the receipt of valuable remittances. The nexus between migration and development is increasingly recognized by the international community. The World Bank, other international financial institutions and 8