Civil Society Representatives Pick Advocacy Priorities for the GFMD Summit -

Ahead of the GFMD Summit, civil society delegates chose the key advocacy priorities that they will carry throughout the Summit: social protection, regularization, fighting xenophobia and access to services.

The Closing Plenary of the Civil Society Preparatory Meeting for the upcoming Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) Summit took place on 15 January 2021.

Following four days of intensive online debate and discussion, the plenary adopted joint civil society advocacy priorities for the GFMD Summit. The four top ones, with strong links across thematic areas, are:

Ensuring social protection for migrants regardless of their status;
Expanding migrants’ regularization and legal migration pathways;
Fighting xenophobia and discrimination; and
Promoting safe access to services and to the judicial system.

Stella Opoku-Owusu of the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD) described the challenges of developing joint recommendations that reflect the full range of civil society priorities and concerns. Thanking participants for their preparatory work, Opoku-Owusu noted “the value of a joint approach to ensuring a consistent voice for civil society” throughout the upcoming Summit, which takes place online on 18-26 January 2021.

During the session, thematic leads reported specific advocacy priorities for each of four thematic areas.

Governance of Labor Migration, and Skilling of Migrants

William Gois of Migrant Forum in Asia presented five key advocacy messages in this area:

Skills recognition, in which recommendations for States include acknowledging prior learning for returnees, granting skill level certification and expanding opportunities for training and skills upgrading;
Access to justice, so as to redress wage theft, and to remedy the impacts of undocumented status for access to COVID-19 healthcare and assistance;
Expanded social protection, to address the particular vulnerability of migrant workers during COVID-19, enhance reintegration support for returnees and improve the pandemic preparedness of countries of origin and destination;
Ensuring representation, by maintaining freedom of association for migrant workers, including those in existing trade unions, and promoting the participation of migrant representative groups in destination countries; and
Recognition of migrants as essential workers, by prioritizing decent work across sectors, and regularizing seasonal and cross-border migrant labor.

Addressing Gaps in Migrant Protection

In her report, Helena Olea of Alianza Americas noted that the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted how “migrants are seen as expendable…which is our biggest challenge.” She identified four protection gaps as priorities for civil society advocacy at the GFMD Summit:

Xenophobia and discrimination, intensified by COVID-19;
Barriers to accessing nationality and risk of statelessness;
Social protection measures that exclude migrants, in terms of both policy and inadequate implementation; and
Access to justice, including legal representation, workplace protections, family reunification and due process in detention.

Irregular Migration

Michele LeVoy of the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) outlined three advocacy priorities emerging from discussions in this thematic area:

Reorienting the policy framework on irregular migration, aimed atclosing the gap between international standards describing the human rights of irregular migrants and security- and return-oriented national policies in this area;
Access to services and justice, in which policymaking is supported by a civil society sector gathering data on access to services by undocumented persons, amplifying city and local level good practice, and advocating for data-sharing “firewalls” between service providers and immigration authorities; and
Sustainable, migrant-centered solutions, in whichpermanent regularization is consistently presented as “part of the solution,” and States move away from temporary labor programs and put civil society and migrant voices at the center of rights-based policymaking.

COVID-19: Building Back Better for Migrants

Opoku-Owusu described existing and new challenges for migrants caused by COVID-19. She highlighted increased xenophobia, stigmatization and discrimination, the exclusion of essential migrant workers from many national pandemic assistance packages and the impacts of a decline in global remittances.

Opoku-Owusu noted the strong civil society consensus on the opportunity to use the knowledge and awareness created by COVID-19 to build a “new perspective on migration and migration policy.” She outlined civil society recommendations for States to:

Ensure a rights-based approach to public policy, aimed at protecting all including the most vulnerable;
Improve public health preparedness;
Take a holistic approach to policymaking, linking labor migration issues with public health to effectively identify and remedy gaps;
Improve communication with migrant populations on public health measures and assistance;
Make regularization programs more sustainable; and
Create the conditions for remittances to continue.