A S I A
Migrant Workers' Convention Not a Magic Solution
by Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK — Millions of Asia's migrant workers may have little to celebrate when a U.N. convention upholding their rights comes into force this year, judging from the poor compliance of existing international labour standards, say regional experts.
Many welcome the 1990 convention on the rights of migrant workers and their families as a major step, not least because it took 12 years for it - long opposed by labour-receiving countries - to acquire the 20 ratifications it needed to come into force.
Guatemala is the 20th country that ratified the convention, allowing it to come into force on Jul. 1.
But this new legal instrument is no magic formula for the difficulty of getting receiving countries and even sending nations to adhere to their commitments to protect the rights of migrant workers.
This has been demonstrated in the way a much older labour convention to protect migrant workers — one adopted in 1947 — continues to be largely ignored, D P A Naidu of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said at a seminar here on Asian migration in mid-February.
A lack of enforcement of ILO Convention 97, according to Naidu, is as troubling. "In many countries it is very weak. There is a lack of sufficient labour inspectors to ensure that the labour laws are enforced."
"The most important thing here is that there is will on the part of governments to ensure that at least certain parts of the convention are applied," he said.
The 1990 U.N. convention, for its part, establishes a higher standard of migrants' rights, this time including even undocumented migrants — unlike the ILO conventions that covered registered or legal workers only.
"The convention is important, because it pressures governments to act and it is a good start," said David Feingold, international coordinator of HIV and trafficking programmes for the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
"But I don't think that is going to address the problem," he said, saying that there are many complexities of international migration that need to be addressed in different ways.
There is also the question of enforcement, Naidu added. Although the 1990 convention will come into force, those that did not ratify it — including some of the largest labour-receiving countries — cannot be forced to follow it or adopt national laws after it.
Most of the countries that ratified this convention are labour-sending ones and smaller nations.
But what should happen after ratification of an international legal instrument is that "workers and other organisations have to pressure the governments concerned", and push for mechanisms of inspection or implementation, Naidu added.
"This is not happening, have you ever seen inspectors coming into a house to inspect the conditions of a domestic worker?" he asked.
In the case of ILO conventions and other international legal instruments, he said the ILO cannot do much "if the government is stubborn and does not want to respect it".
The consequence of the lack of clear, enforced standards covering migrant workers has made women, who comprise a very large chunk of the Asian migrant workforce, the most vulnerable ones, adds Jean D'Cunha of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
The personal cost of migration for women migrants is far higher than men, D'Cunha explained. "They are victims of physical and sexual abuse, of cultural prejudices, and have to deal with marital instability and the adverse impact on their children."
She pointed to other legal instruments that can be used to protect migrants' rights, including the Convention on the Elimination of Dsicrimination against Women - since it is the second most widely ratified U.N. convention.
"The convention has its limits, but it sets rights standards," she said, adding however that it would provide sending states a stronger weapon if it had a monitoring body
What also undermines hopes for those on the migration trail is the reluctance of countries supplying the labour - and hence the most victimised - to agree even among themselves on common standards of labour rights and protection they would want upheld by the receiving countries.
That stems from the competition between the supplying countries to get as many of their unskilled citizens employed abroad due to the foreign exchange they send back home.
Naidu says the difficulty of reaching international consensus on migration can be seen in an ILO-arranged dialogue between sending and receiving countries a few years ago that failed to produce results.
There are over 19 million Asian migration workers in Asia and over 25 million Asian migrants working across the world, according to estimates by non-government groups.
At least half of the migrant workers are women, states Caridad Tharan of the Ford Foundation Philippines in a background paper for the seminar. Many are in domestic work, in the entertainment industry and also in "irregular situations".
Middle Eastern countries such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia top the list of nations that receive the bulk of Asian migrant workers. East Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea and South-east Asian countries as Singapore and Malaysia are also a magnet for migrants.
Still, for labour rights activists, the 1990 convention is a significant first step in securing a number of rights to protect the world's migrant workers, which add up to some 130 million.
Among others, the convention sets standards recognising the rights of the migrant workers and has language identifying necessary mechanisms to investigate violations. The International Organisation of Migration says the convention also "promotes interstate cooperation in addressing (rights) issues in particular to combat trafficking and smuggling in human beings".
But for Deep Ranjani Rai of the Global Alliance Against Traffic, there is another area that needs to be addressed - the attitudes of families that often fuel migration in the first place.
It is not enough applying pressure on governments through international conventions, since women workers are in effect victimised by their own families by pressuring them to earn more , she says.
"We hammer the states all the time, but families have a greater influence over these women than other factors (government or laws)," she pointed out. "Often, the women who go abroad have no respite, because the families at home keep demanding money."
