Culture of Human Rights Needed to Close Gaps in Migrant Protection

Promoting positive migration narratives, ensuring access to services for all and enacting systemic COVID-19 recovery solutions are key to closing gaps in migrant protection, delegates concluded at a 2020 GFMD Summit roundtable.

The roundtable Addressing Gaps in Migrant Protection took place on 19 January 2021, the second day of the 13th Global Forum on Migration and Development Summit (GFMD). Weighing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, it focused on identifying areas of concern, highlighting best practices and examples of partnerships, and determining protection strategies that could underlie sustainable recovery.

With delegates from all four Summit mechanisms – government, civil society, business and mayors – the discussion offered a “360-degree perspective,” said co-chair Ahmed Skim, Director of Migration Affairs, Ministry Delegate to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, African Cooperation and Moroccan Expatriates of Morocco.

The roundtable underlined that COVID-19 has and continues to exacerbate existing gaps in protection for migrants in what UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called the “protection crisis.”

Speaking for the civil society mechanism, Helena Olea of Alianza Americas lifted up the link between the failure to guarantee human rights, and gaps in protection. Human rights standards “recognize the humanity of all people regardless of their nationality” and must be defended. Roundtable co-chair Dr. Cristopher Ballinas Valdés, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, echoed this call as a key element of the discussion: “We need to keep a human rights-centered approach, thinking first of vulnerable people and communities.”

Structural conditions such as the global economic system, views of migrants as replaceable and increased authoritarian tendencies in response to COVID-19 must be considered when addressing gaps in protection, Olea said.

“No one should have to choose between medical treatment and deportation.”

Helena Olea, Alianza Americas

Olea highlighted xenophobia and discrimination as a key area of concern for civil society, with migrants being perceived as a threat and often being criminalized as a result. She underlined that promoting pro-migrant and migration narratives must be a priority, an action seconded by a number of delegates including Ruthra Mary Ramachandran, youth representative of Malaysia National Working Body for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Human Rights.  

Olea said barriers to regularization and nationality are a necessary second focus and emphasized the need for strengthened international protection. She said there is a lack of special protection for a number of vulnerable groups such as climate-displaced people, women and children. In his introduction of the roundtable’s framework paper, consultant to the GFMD John Bingham noted that the top emphasis of meetings leading to the Summit discussion was expanding and simplifying regular pathways, with a logic of regularization.

Olea observed that migrants are being left out of social protection networks, in particular migrants with irregular status and families with mixed status. A lack of documentation underlies many protection gaps and results in an accompanying fear of detention and deportation. She called for firewalls between public service access and immigration or law enforcement controls. “No one should have to choose between medical treatment and deportation,” Olea said.

Lack of protection also takes the form of the denial of due process and a lack of access to justice, Olea said. Partnerships with universities, legal associations and local authorities can provide free legal services for migrants. Ending detention practices would “close an important gap” in protection, she noted.

Olea named labor protections as a final priority protection gap to address. Here, firewalls are needed as well to ensure safe working contracts, and the monitoring of recruitment systems to stop exploitative practices. Addressing wage theft is central to building a just recovery from COVID-19, said Ellene Sana of the Center for Migrant Advocacy, pointing to the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have been denied their wages due to the pandemic.

Olea noted that the absence of a culture of human rights is creating an even greater crisis at the global level and called for new approaches. “Gaps in the protection of migrants can be overcome and should be one of the goals of reconstruction.”

Skim closed the roundtable by affirming the need to respect, protect and fulfill the human rights of all migrants, whatever their status or the stage of their migration.


Photo: David Sjunnesson on Unsplash