THE hot button issue of “migration” must take front and center at the upcoming international meeting prior to the adoption of a global compact in Morocco, a top Philippine diplomat said on Tuesday.
“We are a few months away from adopting a comprehensive document that will put migration where it rightfully belongs: ‘at the front and center of international discourse, deserving of its own instrument and secured of a place in our common history,’” Ambassador Evan P. Garcia, Permanent representative to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva, told a two-day conference in Manila on the draft Global Compact on Migration (GCM).
Garcia said the product of this week’s gathering will be adopted in December in Morocco, “the first global instrument that will finally recognize the complex, multidimensional and ultimately positive force that migration exerts in our interconnected world.”
He underscored that spotlighting this issue “is long overdue.”
“Migration is as old as humanity, as certain as our collective aspirations, as difficult to deny as the exhortations of our identities and cultures,” he said at the opening session of the two-day Conference on the Future of Migration, on the context of the Global Compact on Migration.”
The GCM will be the first, intergovernmental negotiated agreement, prepared under the auspices of the UN, to cover all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner.
In the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, adopted in September 2016, the General Assembly decided to develop “a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration.”
The General Assembly will then hold an intergovernmental conference on international migration in 2018 with a view to adopting the global compact.
According to refugees and migrants, “the global compact is a significant opportunity to improve the governance on migration, to address the challenges associated with today’s migration, and to strengthen the contribution of migrants and migration to sustainable development.”
‘Just a first step’
Ambassador Garcia said the GCM may be groundbreaking, “but it is also just the first step towards meaningful and sustainable global migration governance.”
Through the cross-sectoral dialogue, Garcia hopes that the ideas arising from the thorough discussions on migration issues will “inspire, revolutionize and maybe even provoke” and “hopefully pierce the veil of resistance that stubbornly clings to some sectors.”
He added, “We must not break this momentum. The withdrawal of some countries from the process and the temptation of cynicism prove that the counter-narrative is strong, as well.”
Garcia said, “We cannot allow a bandwagon of hurtful rhetoric and complacency to push migration out of the central position it now holds in global discourse.”
Asked for the significance of the gathering, Garcia said, “migration is a global issue that is important for the Philippines. The purpose of this event is to carry on the momentum attained in New York, where we approved the text on the GCM.”
In the same ongoing conference on the GCM, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Sarah Lou Y. Arriola remarked that the Philippines prides itself in being a global champion for the rights, welfare, and protection of migrants.
This was evidently consistent, she said, during the seven rounds of GCM intergovernmental negotiations, where the Philippine delegation made sure —that “proviso by proviso, objective by objective, and even word by word—that human rights and sustainable development are at the heart of the GCM.”
“The Philippines has more than four decades of experience and lessons in the deployment of overseas workers —a large number of them household workers, who unfortunately have featured to be the most vulnerable in the group.”
She said recent incidents involving Filipino domestic helpers have shed further light on their plight and suffering, “absent adequate protection and implementation of laws designed to ensure their security at their workplaces.”
Ambassador Arriola, who revealed in a New York gathering that she once was a migrant worker who became a human rights lawyer, emphasized that the human rights of overseas workers “are not any percentage less than that of any other human being.”
“Basic human rights are innate and should be afforded to all, especially those in potentially harmful, abusive, or less-than-conducive environments.”
She said the Compact was shaped by experiences of the participating State delegations and by these experiences that “we would further share, and aspire to grow and move forward.”
Although the GCM has documented a global migration governance framework, Arriola proposed “to keep it alive and meaningful to migrants.”
She said migrants should be informed of what are being done for their welfare, as well as the ever-evolving actions by concerned agencies.
“It is now up to the initiatives of States today and tomorrow to keep the wheels of GCM rolling.”
She noted the Philippines is home to nearly 10 million Overseas Filipino Workers or OFWs. The Middle East alone has more than two million of them, “who in turn call many of the countries you represent, Excellencies, their second home,” she said, addressing the delegates from various countries.
Image credits: Nonbie Reyes